Full text of "Amiga User International 1994 07"

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For the serious Amiga user 
Incorporating AmigaCDI Magazine 


EG P1094 

BONDI JUNCTION | 
NEWSAGENCY 


m $11.25 


AMIGA USER INTERNATIONAL 


SUPERDISK No. 39 

Over 1.2 Megabytes of programs! 


Virus Checker 6.41 - The very latest in viru 
CloudsAGA - Create beautiful cloudsl 
GBIanker -13 different screen Mankersl 
Plus: Blob game. BiglistMaker. CUpBoard I 
Chess. LhaDirDOpus. GuiArc. MiniPacman. 
Professional Filing System. Washer, and W 
Check SuperDisk pages for Amiga compatibility 


SUPERDISK No. 40 

The Best of AUI Vol.1 

n CLASSIC I GIGER-TET?! 

programs mg 

ON ONE W" 

GREAT COVERDISK! . 


Fast JPEG VI.10 - The best JPEG viewer 
Imploder V4.0 - The best executable file 
GiegerTetris - The best AGA Tetris g 
Disksalv2 - The best disk salvaging | 
Plus - BigAnim. MegaWorm. MemCh 
SYSinfo. ToolsDaemon. WBVertauf 


GlGER-TET^i*! 

LINES: o 

■ SCORE' a 4 

‘ft 1 LEVEL-- 1 


, QuickGrab. 


THE BEST OF THE BEST OF AUI! 


m*mi mm 


im. 

isii 


pap!S aiH^oa 

the SuperDisk 
10 in this issui 


So 


770955 


107994 


Interactive Magazine 


PLUS 

Magic Lantern, Fed-Case, 
Toccata Board, Amiga Comal 
and all you need to know 
about Data Storage, 

Internet and the 1200. 


Your NeWScfgg 

papiS afinoa 

the 9uperDisk 


10 ill this issu 








































































COMPUTER CENTRE 


OPEN 7 DAYS A WEEK 

OPEN MON - SAT.9.30AM-5.30PM 

SUNDAY OPENING.I I.00AM-3.00PM 

THURSDAY NIGHT LATE...9.30AM-7.30PM 
OPEN HALF DAY MOST BANK HOLIDAYS 


TELEPHONE LEEDS 

24 HOUR MAIL ORDER SERVICE 6UNES! 

0532 3 I 9444 

FAX: 0532 3 I 9 I 91 


SHOWROOM ADDRESS: 
DEPT. AUI, UNIT 3, ARMLEY 
PARK COURT, OFF CECIL ST, 
STANNINGLEYRD, LEEDS, 
LSI2 2AE 


HOW TO ORDER 

Order by telephone quoting your credit 
card. Please make cheques payable to the: 

"FIRSTCOMPUTER CENTRE" 

In any correspondence please quote a 
phone number & post code. Do not forget 
to include the delivery tariff & Dept. code. 
Allow 5 working days for cheque clearance. 


•All prices include VAT @ 17.5% 

• Large showroom with free parking 
•Overseas orders taken 

• Educational orders welcome 

• Established Multi million pound company 


UK MAINLAND 
DELIVERY TARIFFS 

•Standard Delivery. £ 1.50 

•Guaranteed 2 to 3 day (week days) 

Delivery. £2.95 

•Guaranteed Next Day (week days) 
Delivery. £4.95 


AMIGA REPAIRCENTRE 


EASY ACCESS FROM M62, MI and the AI 
M62/M62I ^ - ARMLEY_ 



LEEDS 

CITY 

CENTRE 


FIRST COMPUTER 
CENTRE 


We recommend you confirm prices 
before placing an order. E&OE. 


FI 


computer centre (LEEDS)Tel:0532 319444 


CD ROM Drives PRINTERS 


Internal SCSI CD-ROM drives for the A1500/2000/4000 1 
(with suitable SCSI interface). All drives include driver I 
software & will read both CDTV / CD32 & PC ISO 9600 1 
standard disks. External kits for A3000 also available 

NEC Multispin 2X1 nternal £194.99 

• 265Ms Access time •355KB transfer rate 

TEAC CD-50 nternal £339.99 

(Amiga 1500/2000 compatible only) 

• 320Ms Access time •300KB transfer rate 

TOSHIBA XM3401 Internal 


I All our printers are UK spec, come I 
| with ribbon/toner, printer drivers | 
(if available), paper & cables// 


Canon 


• 200Ms Access time 


• 330KB transfer rate 


£321.99 
TOSHIBAXM4IOI 

• 385Ms Access time •300KB transfer rate 

lnternal.£2 19.99 External.£3 14.99 
Mitsumi LU0005 single Speed....£99.99 1 
Mitsumi FX0011D Dual Speed.£ 169.99 1 
Tandon IDE CD ROM Controller 
I for use with Mitsumi only... .£69.99 1 
GVP A4008 SCSI controller^ 122.99 


Canon BJI Osx.£ 182.99 | 

Laser quality output. Large buffer 

Canon BJ200.£231.991 

3 page a min speed, 360 dpi, small footprint & 80 I 
page sheetfeeder 

Canon BJ230.£319.99 | 

wide carriage version of above 

Canon BJ300.£419.99 1 

Desktop bubble jet with laser quality 

Canon BJ330.£464.99 1 

Wide carriage version of the BJ300 

Canon BJC600 Colour.£532.99 1 

new bubble jet from Canon 

BJ 10 Autosheetfeeder.£49.99 I 


NEW! FIRSTcomm 
Bulletin Board 


NEW LOW 
PRICES 


CITIZEN 


I Why not place your orders on our new | 
Bulletin board. 

First Comm is however not just a 
means of ordering, it also gives you 
access to read or download technical 
support files and advice. 

Tel. 0532 637988 


Citizen printers have a 2 year guarantee 

New! ABC Colour printer.£154.99 

simple (as easy as ABC) to use 24 pin printer. Comes 
as standard with 50 sheet Auto sheetfeeder. 

Tractor feed optional at £27.99 
only £ 139.99 if bought without the colour option 

Swift 90 Colour.£156.991 

Excellent value 9 pin colour. Highly recommended I 

Swift 200 Colour.£181.99 


SOFTWARE special offers! 


Wordworth 2 & Print Manager....only £ 19.99 1 
Deluxe Paint 4 AGA.only £34.99 1 

when you purchase any printer or Genlock 


The AMIGA AI 200 
A1200 Standard pack only £259.99 

without games software 

I Computer Combat pack only £334.99/ 


All H P printers come with a 3 year warranty 


RACE & CHASE pack only £289.99/ 

with Nigel Mansell FI and Trolls! 

DESKTOP DYNAMITE pack 

with Wordworth 2 AGA, Print Manager, DP4 AGA, Dennis and Oscar 

only £329.99 

HARD DRIVE VERSIONS 

STD pack R&C pack DID pack 

64Mb.. .£419.99.£439.99.£489.99 

85Mb.. .£479.99.£489.99.£537.99 

1 27Mb.£499.99 .£519.99.£564.99 

209Mb.£569.99 .£589.99.£629.99 


f NEW I 
VSTARP 


-IL 


COMPUTER PRINTERS 


We offer $ FREE quotation on your Amiga or any I 
peripheral (monitors, printers etc). A delivery tariff I 
of just £5.00 is charged or alternatively you can visit! 
our showroom. We can also arrange a courier pickup] 
at an additional cost of £11.00. 


THE CHAOS PACK! 

•CHAOS ENGINE 

•NICK FALDO CHAMPIONSHIP GOLF 
•PINBALL FANTASIES 
•SYNDICATE 

only £29.99 or £19.99 

with any AMIGA/ 


the M62I and follow the turnoff for | 
Leeds/York. This will merge with the Armley gyratory. 


From the MI follow signs for the M621 (ignore exit for town I 
centre). Take A643 Elland Rd turnoff from M62I. Follow signs I 
for A58. This merges with Armley gyratory. 


From the AI take the turnoff fortheA64. This merges with I 
the A58 (by-passing Leeds town centre) which meets the I 
Armley gyratory. After "Living World" at traffic lights I 
take a right, left, left again, & 2nd left to get to FCC. 


The AMIGA 4000 

A4000/030, 80 Mb HD.£1009.99 

A4000/030,130 Mb HD.£1114.99 

A4000/030.2I4 Mb HD*.£1174.99 

A4000/030.540 Mb HD*.£1469.99 

A4000/40 

A4000/040LC, 120 Mb HD*.£ 1569.99 I 

A4000/040LC.214 Mb HD.£ 1614.99 I 

A4000/040LC.540 Mb HD*.£ 1859.99 | 

A4000/40 SCSI Tower 

A4000/040TW.214 Mb HD*.£ 1959.99 

A4000/040TW.525 Mb HD*.£2254.99 

A4000/040TW, I GIG HD*.£2549.99 

All the above examples come with 6 Mb of RAM as Standard 
♦The hard drive only is not covered by on site warranty 

All Amiga's come with Workbench, mouse 6 12 month warranty. The A1200 & A4000 come 
with 12 months on site warranty All 1200's also come with a built in integral hard disk option. 


PRINTER CONSUMABLES 


A600& 1200's 2.5" HD kits 



♦Just Add £ 10.00 for fitting 

60Mb....*£ 134.99 120Mb.. *£219.99 

80Mb... *£ 159.99 250Mb...*£309.99 

I 3.5" H/drlve upgrade kit no HD only £22.99 




PRIMA A 1200 REAL 
TIME CLOCK 

Date & time stamp files. Fits directly onto motherboard with no soldering 


SUPRA MODEMS 


Same out put as the 240 but with less facilities 

Swift 240 Colour.£218.99 | 

24 pin, 240cps draft, 10 fonts, quiet mode, 240cps. 

Projet II.£254.991 

new inkjet printer with built in auto sheet feeder I 

Swift AutoSheetfeeder.£79.99 [ 

Wfiol HEWLETT 

mL'HM PACKARD 

HP 3 10 Portable.£229.99 

NEW/HP 520 mono.£249.99 

HP 500 Colour.£344.99 

NEW! HP 560 Colour.£499.99 

even faster than the old HP550C// 


S upra r f mMModem 288 

NEWSuperfast! 28,800bps+ l4,400Fax 
Phone for more details only £299.99 

S upra Modem I44LC 
V.32 bis (14400 baud/) 

Low cost version of the classic V32Bis Fax modem. 
Features as below but class I fax only and LED display 

only £159.9 9 
S ugra^ ^swModem v.32bis 

This modem has full 14400 baud, includes V.32bis, 
V.32, V.22bis, V22, V2I, MNP2-5, V.42, V42bis, 
Class I & 2 commands, 9600/14400 Group 3 Fax. 
Includes free modem comms (not Fax)s/w & cable 

only £209.99 
S uprap MK PIUS .£119.99 

Even faster than the standard 2400 from Supra with 
auto dial & auto receive. 9600 bps Hayes comp. 
V22Bis, V42 Bis, MNP 2-5 & auto adjustto maximise 
transmission speeds. Includes free modem comms 
(not Fax) s/w & cable. 

♦ 

Supra 2400 .£64.99 

Get on line using this great value fast modem with 
auto dial & receive. 2400 baud Hayes comp, V22 
BIS. Includes free modem comms s/w & cable// 

Supra modems are not BABT approved, however they 
perform as well & often out perform BABT approved 
modems. Supra Modems have a 5 year limited warranty 

Mobotics 

WE ARE PREFERRED USR DEALERS 

Sportster 2496+Fax.£ 145.99 

Sportster 14400 Fax.£189.99 

WorldPort 14400 +Fax.£251.99 

Courier HST( 16.8).£469.99 

Courier V32bis T erbo +Fax.£449.99 

Courier HST/Dual 16.8 Fax.£486.99 

Courier HST/Dual l6.8TerboFax.£556.99 

If you thought V32bis was fast try the terbo! They 
come with a 5 year warranty cS are BABT Approved! 


Star LC100 colour.£1 19.99 | 

9 pin colour, 8 fonts, 180 cps draft, 45 cps NLQ 

StarLC24-IOO.£126.991 

Star LC24-30 Col.£ 199.99 | 

complete with automatic sheet feeder, 192 cps draft 

Star LC24-300 Col.£249.99 1 

24 pin quality, 264 cps draft, 80 cps LQ, 39K buffer 
expandible to 48K, 16 fonts and quiet mode. 

Star LC24-200 colour.£219.99 1 

Colour version with 30K buffer expandable to 62K 

Star SJ 48 Bubble jet.£209.99 | 

Laser quality, ultra quiet, Epson compatible & portable 

Star SJ 144 Colour Thermal 

Stunning affordable colour printer. 3 PPM, low running costs I 

only £349.99 

Star SJ48 Autosheet feeder 
only £49.99 
Univedrsal Printer Stand only £4.99 1 


MONITORS 


All our monitors are UKspec. All monitors 
come complete with a free Amiga lead* 


] 


Sharp TV/Monitor £ 184.99 

includes remote control, stereo sound 


Microvitec 14" Multisync 

I year warranty . £399.99 

♦free cable for A4000 only. A1200 cable £6.99 extra 

NEW! Microvitec Autoscan 1438 

.28 dpi, 15/38 KHz, all Amiga modes, AGA comp, 
no audio, tilt & swivell stand. 

now only £289.99 


NEW! Acorn AKF40.£249.99 


Stereo, colour monitor with similar spec to the old 
Philips 8833 and Commodore 1084S. Includes 
built in tilt and swivell stand. 


2% surcharge on AMEX 


check for compatibility Only £1 3.99/ 


RIBBONS 

Citizen Swift mono ribbon. . £4.99 

Citizen Swift Colour ribboa .£ 13.99 

Star LC 10/100 mono. .£3.69 

Star LC200 mono. .£4.99 

Star LC 10/100 colour. .£7.99 

Star LC200 colour. .£12.99 

Star LC24-30 mono. .£8.99 

Star LC24-30/200 Colour. .£1 1.99 

Re-Ink Spray for mono ribbons .£ 11.99 

COVERS 

Canon printer cover (please specify model). .£5.99 

Citizen Swift/ABC .£5.99 

HP 500/550/510 .£5.99 

Star LC 100/200. .£5.99 

Star LC24-300/30 .£5.99 

Star LC 10/20 cover. .£4.99 

PAPER 

prices apply only when ordered with printer or purchased 
direct from the showroom 

Fanfold (tractorfeed).500 sheets... ..£4.99 

Fanfold (tractor feed).1000 sheets.. .£8.99 

Fanfold (tractor feed).2000 sheets.£ 17.99 

Single sheet.500 sheets.. .£4.99 

Single sheet.1000 sheets.. .£8.99 

Single sheet.2000 sheets.£ I 7.99 

Delivery for 2000 sheets £5.00 when purchased without printer 


PREMIER Ink 
Cartridge Refills 

Save a fortune in running costs with your ink/ 
bubble jet. Compatible with the HP500/550, 
Deskjet Plus, Canon BJ 10/20/80/130/200/300/330, 
Star SJ48, Citizen Projet and many others. Full 
range of colours available. 

Single refills (22ml) .£6.99 

Twin refills (44ml) .£ I 2.99 

Three colour kit (66ml) .£ I 9.99 

Full colour kit (88ml) .£27.99 

Bulk refills (I 25ml) .£24.99 

Cartridges 

Canon BJ 10 cartridge .£18.99 

Double life 500 cartridges. .£24.99 

HP550/500 Colour cartridge .£24.99 

Star SJ48 cartridge .£ 18.99 

Star SJ 144 cartridge (pack of 3) .£42.99 

Star SJ 144 mono cartridges (3 pack).. .£21.99 
Star SJ 144 colour cartridges (3 pack).. £21.99 
Miscellaneous 

Printer Switch Box 2 way. .£ 12.99 

Printer Switch Box 3 way. .£ 17.99 

Printer Stands (Universal). .£7.99 

3 Metre printer cable .£6.99 

5 Metre printer cable .£8.99 

10 metre printer cable .£ 12.99 














































































































































PRIMAA500&A600 RAM SPECIAL OFFERS/ ROMBO PRODUCTS SOFTWARE 


3 YEAR WARRANTY'/ 

A500 512k RAM 
expansion (no clock).£ 19.99 | 
A500 Plus I Mb RAM 

expansion.£34.99 

A600 I Mb RAM expansion 
(with clock) .£39.99 


32 BIT RAM (for A4000 etc) 


1 MbSIMM.£39.991 

2 Mb SIMM.£95.991 

4 MbSIMM.£152.991 

8 Mb SIMM.£309.991 


RAM & CUSTOM CHIPS 


SPEED 

PLCC 

PGA 

25 Mhz 

33 Mhz 

50 Mhz 

£53.99 

£71.99 

N/A 

£69.99 

£9199 

£137.99 


I Directory Opus 4. £51.99 I 

Distant Suns 5. £35.99 I 

XCopy Pro plus hardware. £25.99 I 

Technosound Turbo. £ I 8.99 I 

Technosound Turbo 2. £25.99 I 

Wordworth 2 AGAwith PrintMgr/. £34.99 I 

Deluxe Paint 4 AGA. £39.99 I 

Frame Machine (one only). £579.99 I 

Video Director 2 (one only). £579.99 | 

Workbench 2.04 software and ROM upgrade 
(complete with manuals) 
only £49.99 

Roboshift automatic mouse/joystick switch 
only £ 13.99 or £ 16.99 with mouse emulation 
and rapid fire push on modules 


The amazing new 
graphics tablet for the 
Amiga developed with 
the help of First 
Computers. 86% rated 
in ST Format January 
issue! Requires 2.04 WB 
or above 

only £54.99 



I mb by 8/9 SIMMS (I Mb). £34.99l 

4 Mb by 9 SIMMS (4 Mb). £144.991 

I Mb by 4 DRAMS( I Mb). £39.991 

I Mb by 4 ZIPS( 1 12 Mb). £22.99 1 

256by4ZIPS. (each)£5.99l 

256 by 4 DRAM (DILs).(each) £5.99 1 

DKB 1202 A1200 RAM board. £84.99 1 

takes 2 32 bit SIMMs. Has an optional FPU. See| 
above for prices 

Kickstart 1.3. £19.99 1 

Kickstart 2.04. £24.99 1 

Kickstart 2.05 (for use in A600)...£26.991 

Fatter Agnes 83 72A. £26.99 1 

Super Denise. £ 18.99 1 

6571-0326 Keyboard controller^ 13.991 
CIA 8520A I/O controller. £8.99 1 


AMIGA 1200 RAM 


HAWK CO-PR & RAM 

Realise the full potential of your AI200 with 
this trapdoor expansion, inc real time clock 

1 MB RAM. £98.99 

2 MB RAM. £134.99 

4 MB RAM. £198.99 

8 MB RAM. £394.99 

1 MB & 20 MHz CO PRO.. ..£ I 47.99 

2 MB & 33 MHz CO PRO....£ I 98.99 
4 MB & 40 MHz CO PRO. ...£294.99 
8 MB & 40 MHz CO PRO. ...£494.99 

FULL 2 YEAR WARRANTY 


SUPRAA500 RAM 


Simply the best! Fits onto the side expansion port Auto configures with qq U 
software patching. ■ 

8Mb pop to 2 Mb. £159.991 

8Mb pop to 4 Mb. £214.991 

8Mb pop to 8 Mb. £319.991 

8Mb pop to 2 Mb for 2000/1500 range..£l49.99 1 


GVP PRODUCTS 


A1200 Products 

33 Mhz68882for A1200 SCSI/RAM. £77.99 1 

External SCSI kit SCSI/RAM. £47.99 1 

NEW/A1230 MKII Accelerator Board | 


SCANNERS 


Alfa Data Alfa Scan 

I hand held scanner with 256 greyscales and up to 800 I 
Dpi 

only £ 114.99 
or£139.99 with OCR software 

Alfa Data Alfa Colour Scan 

| 18 bit scanner with 256K colours inc colour correction 

only £329.99 

Power Scanner V4 £1 19.99 

I With the latest version 4 s/w for bright & sharp grey scale I 
performance. Flexible scanned image display manipulation I 
options, plus Clean up, embolden, resize & flip. 

Colour version only £239.99 

lEPSON GT6500 Colour Flatbed | 
only £587.50 phone for details 
I Art Department Pro Scanner S/W..£ 109.99 I 

lcompatible with Epson ES300C, ES600C, 
IES800C, GT6000, GT6500 & GT8000 


VIDI 12 Real Time £134.99 

I Real time colour digitizing from any video | 
source. Full AGA support 

VIDI 24 Real Time £223.99 

I 24 bit quality real time colour digitizing from I 
any video source. Full AGA support 

VIDI 12 AGA £70.99 

I Full support for AGA chipset. Colour images I 
captured in less than a second, mono images I 
in real time with any video source. | 
I Multitasking s/w, cut & paste. 

| VIDI 12 Sound & Vision AGA | 

with built in MegamixMaster £98.99 

TAKE 2 £35.99 

I Features include load and save from D. Paint | 
animations and IFF files. Supports HAM graphics. 

Megamix Master.£26.99 1 

8 bit, high spec, sampler. Special effects include I 
echo that can be added in real time, fully multitasking I 
& easy to use. 


ACCELERATORS 


MICROBOTICS 

I MBX I200Z with 20 MHz FPU.£89.99 I 

| MBX I200Z with 50 MHz FPU.£214.99 

expandible to 8 Mb 32 Bit RAM (see RAM prices) [ 

I New Ml230 for Al200 withup to 128 Mb fast RAM! 

M I 230 XA 33Mhz, 0Mb.£245.99 

M I 230 XA 40Mhz, 0Mb.£264.99 

M I 230 XA 50Mhz, 0Mb.£334.99 I 

VXL30 25 Mhz (for A500).£184.99 I 

VXL 30 40 Mhz (for A500).£259.99 1 

| VXL 2 Mb Ram Board (for A500).£ I 89.99 I 

expandible to 8 Mb 32 Bit RAM (see RAM prices) 

I SUPRA 28 ACCELERATOR 

for the A500/A500+& AI 500/2000 

I 28 Mhz, uses A500 side port so there is noj 
| internal fitting 

only £144.99! 


MICE &TRACKERBALLS 


Speed 

RAM 

FPU 

Cost 

! 40 

0 

0 

£244.99 

40 

4 

0 

£437.99 

40 

4 

40 

£535.99 

40 

8 

0 

£634.99 

50 

0 

0 

£369.99 

50 

4 

0 

£564.99 

50 

4 

50 

£664.99 

! 50 

8 

0 

£759.99 


A1500/2000/4000 Products 

HC8+/0Mb drive. £122.99 

HC8+/42Mb drive. £197.99 

HD8+/120Mb drive. £299.99 

PC286 Emulator for HD8+/A530. £99.99 

G-Force 030 40 Mhz 4Mb RAM. £599.99 

Hard Drive mounting kit for G-Force. £34.99 

GVP Simms 

I Mb. £64.991 

4 Mb. £194.991 

1291 SCSI ModuleforAI 200. £79.991 


Miscellaneous Hardware 


CD Rom Amiga A570 only £98.99/ 

Turns your Amiga 500 into a CDTV. Includes Fred Fish CDPD disk & Sim City ■ 

XDS Dataflyer External Hard drive kit. £64.99 I 

DKB MegaChip II (2Mbchip RAM). £169.99 1 

gives 2 Mb of chip memory on A500/A1500/2000 
ROCHARD DRIVES from £214.99 (42Mb) 
for the A500/A500+ 
takes standard IDE hard drives, expandable to 8Mb | 
using I Mb SIMMS, inc. PSU & installation software 


I Alpha Data Mega Mouse 90 % rating. 290 
Dpi.. £10.99 or £12.99 for 400 Dpi version 

DATALUX CLEAR MOUSE High 

quality clear 2 button mouse. ... . £19.99 

Zydec Trackball.£29.99 

Golden Image Trackbail.£37.99 


DISK DRIVES 


NEW! Golden Image drive with 
LCD track display....only £49.99 1 
NEW! 
AMITEC 
I mb 3.5" 
drive 

Features Anti Click, I 
Anti Virus, Sony Mech, | 
2 year warranty 

only £58.99 
| Cumana3.5".only £56.99 1 

I meg external drive. The best name in disc drives 

I A600/1200 internal drive.£53.99 

I A500 internal drive.£49.99 

1 A4000 internal HD drive.£99.99 


GENLOCKS 




PRIMA ROM SHARERS 


This high quality ROM sharer features a flexible 
ribbon connection so that it can be positioned 
anywhere within your A500 Plus or A600. Full 2 
year replacement warranty 

now only £ 17.99 or £24.99 

for keyboard switchable version 


ACCESSORIES 



1 Hi ISB mu lweo8l [HIGH | 

hama on demo now! 

The Professional answer 
I hama 292.£269.99 1 

S-Video, and composite compatible 

| hama 290.£674.99 1 

S-Video, and composite mixing, plus far more 

| GVP Genlock.only £289.99 1 

features professional SVHS output 

Rocgen Plus.only £152.991 

Includes dual control for overlay and keyhole ef- 1 
fects, extra RGB pass thru. 

Rendale 8802 FMC..only £164.99 
Rocgen Rockey.only £ 152.99 

For creating special effects in video 
production with genlocks. 


QTY 

BulkDS/DD 

Branded DS/DD 

10 

30 

50 

100 

200 

500 

1000 

£4.49 

£12.99 

£20.99 

£37.99 

£69.99 

£168.99 

£324.99 

£5.49 

£14.99 

£22.99 

£42.99 

£79.99 

£190.99 

£365.99 


BUSINESS 

Maxi Plan 4. 

Mini Office. 

.£24.99 

.£38.99 

Money Matters. 

£35.99 

MISCELLANEOUS 

Distant Suns 5. 

.£35.99 

XCAD2000.. 

£97.99 

XCAD3000__ 

....£289.99 

MUSIC/SOUND 

f.larity 16 sampler 

.—£105.99 

Deluxe Music Construction Set v2- 

Pro Midi Interface by Microdeal . 

.£59.99 

.£24.99 

T echno Sound T urbo........._........ 

_£18.99 

Techno Sound Turbo 2.. 

.....£25.99 

PROGRAMMING 

Amnc Creator. 

£34.99 

Amos Compiler. 

_£21.99 

Am os 3 D....._........................_......... 

......£25.99 

AmOS Professional.....,,, 

.£47.99 

Amos Professional Compiler. 

.£24.99 

Bliz Basic . . ... 

£53.99 

Deypac 3........... TTtTt „„„ 

.£50.99 

Easy AMOS. 

SASC Version 6.5.. 

.£24.99 

....£234.99 




Real Time A1200 internal clock module...only £13.99 I 

Mouse/joystick manual port switcher. only £ i 3.99 I 

Computer Video Scart Switch. only £ 19.99 | 

2/3/4 way Parallel port sharers £POA 
Amiga Sound Enhancer Plus by Omega Projects. Hear the 

Amiga's sound like you've never heard it before!. £36.99 

QUALITY MOUSE MATS. £3.99 

10 CAPACITY DISK BOX. £0.99 

20 CAPACITY DISK BOX. £2.99 

40 CAP LOCKABLE DISK BOX. £3.99 

100 CAP LOCKABLE DISK BOX. £5.49 

*90 CAP STACKABLE BANX BOX. £9.99 

*150 CAP STACKABLE POSSO BOX. £17.99 

*add £3.00 delivery if purchasing just one Posso or Banx box. Normal 
delivery when purchased with other product or when buying 2 or more. 

AMIGA A500 DUST COVER. £3.99 

AMIGA 600 COVER. £2.99 

14" MONITOR DUSTCOVER. £6.99 

NEW! Keyboard Membrane Covers.. —£ 14.95 

AMIGA TO SCART CABLES. £9.99 

STD 1.8 METRE AMIGA PRINTER LEAD....£4.99 

MODEM AND NULL MODEM CABLES. £9.99 

AMIGA CONTROL STATIONS 

I A500 or 1200 VERSION. £36.99 I 

A600 VERSION. £29.99 I 


DISKS 


All disks are 100% error free guaranteed 

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JULY 1994 Vol.8 No.6 



INTERNATIONAL 


CONSTANT 

FACTORS 


6 The Amiga 
Dimension 

Manging Editor Antony Jacobson 
examins Commodore’s latest prob¬ 
lems with a hankerchief in his hand. 
But not all is doom and gloom... 


8 Superdisk 39 

Gary Fenton crams another disk 
full of goodies to fulfill everyone’s 
dreams. From the latest VirusChecker 
to a new de-archiving program with a 
tiny bit of fun in the shape of Pacman 
on your Workbench. 


Check Crunched Filti I I ignore Capture Check Files I 

Hatch S-Sequence Use BBLib Iidisk-validator 

Use Hindou? j/J_| Lou Check Off 

l9nore BB Read Error _| 

Hindou Backdrop? _| 

Stay Besident? V\ 

Hindou X Position: |2B | 

Hindou X Position: |2I I add | Selete | Check I 

Hotkey: llconwand shift del 1 


_ 


flutonatIcallv Check Inserted Disks 
0F8: _s£jori: ^Jof 2: _s£j DF3: 
Rutonatically Check Entire Disk 
| 0F8: _|0F1: __J DF2: _10F3: _| 


Quit I 


12 


Amiga CD! 
No.3 


1 NewsFile 

Once more unto the bre¬ 
ach, Anthony Mael and Martin Witton 
launch a pre-emptive strike on the news 
and gossip from the technofreakedout 
world we live in. 


Edutainment 

Martin Witton reviews two 
packages that could make your chil - 
or you - a Picasso and a statistical 
genius. 



rfTR°lDTo 

OlOl-l '1 1 |HI 





The Video 
Column 


Alan Puzey shows how to become a 
movie maker with all that’s available to 
Amiga users. 


4 4 ft Programming 

JLXwTips 

Paul Overaa shows how a little ad¬ 
vance planning can speed up your 
calculations. 

Arexx Info 

Expanding on the idea 
of portable Arexx commands, Paul 
Overaa moves into the field of text 
orientated programs. 


ocoDse \ a 

IK 

IK 


1 4 ^The PD 
Stakeout 

Scouring the libraries, a red-eyed 
Gideon Overhead guides you through 
the best games, demos and serious soft¬ 
ware that you can get for almost free. 




Backagain, this month’s CD has some¬ 
thing for all CD users. Now we’ve 
made it compatible for CDTV owners 
too. And even the A570 can join in the 
rave. Games, demos and even a bit of 
technical stuff for those who need it. A 
World First - Sorry, Third! 


1 C SuperDisk 40 

The BestoM(//Vol.1 The 
cream of AUI Coverdisks, collected 
and compiled by Gideon Overhead for 
those who can’t use our wonderful 
Compact Disc. If this doesn’t have 
something to suit you, you’re not look¬ 
ing hard enough! 



4 4 O Amiga 
Answers 

Is your Amiga causing you pain in the 
proverbial? Does your printer provide 
nothing but panic? Andy Eskelson pro¬ 
vides the necessary ointment to soothe 
the swelling and calm the crises. 


Video - the Amiga is ideal. 



AUI • JULY 1994 


4 OO Write to 
Reply 

Complaints and compliments, cureses 
and cheers are received by the just 
and fair Bud Vennos. Of course, the 
replies may not be overly kind... 



TEST DRIVE 


The 1200 
Goes CD 


Gary Fenton reviews the A1200 CD, a 
drive that people never thought they 
would ever see. At last the A1200 can 
truly join the multimedia revolution. 


O^^Towering Above 

The latest in Commodore’s 
line of powerhouses, the A4000T is 
test driven by the man who has tried 
everything,Gary Fenton. How much 
can anyone handle? 














































































Magic Lantern 

You’ll like it, but how 
much? Gary Fenton peers through the 
gloom to see if this new 24 bit anima¬ 
tion software is truly magic or more a 
case of sleight of eye. 

Sounds Great 

Steven Broadbent bends 
your ear about the Toccata card that 
may make 16 bit seem very musical to 
your ears. 

Driving Force 

Andy Eskelson pushes his 
Amiga into the world of CD-ROM with 
this new drive. 


Media Point 

Gary Fenton tests out the 
latest update of this fantastic multime¬ 
dia package. 

Amiga Comal 

The programming lan¬ 
guage that doesn’t get the exposure it 
deserves is test driven with pleasure 
by Paul Overaa. 

Speak Out 

Gary Fenton hears how it 
can all sound in glorious technicolour 
stereo with the option now available 
from Golden Image. 









How does the Personal Animation 
Recorder cope with the rigours of pro¬ 
fessional life? In a follow-up to last 
month’s review of this amazing piece 
of hardware, Barry McCarthy really 
hits it with all it can professionally take. 

Fed-CASE 

Andy Eskelson explains 
how this new flowchart package can 
make your programming life a lot easier. 


USER PORT 


How Does 
That Work? No.1 

A new AUI series begins with Data 
Storage. Floppy, hard, magneto-opti¬ 
cal even? What and how you can store 
your information is explained by 
Michael Rumbelow. 

M Dancing on 

40 pairs of Legs 

Know your bit from your byte with 
Michael Rumbleow’s explanation of 
what it’s - bits that is - all about. 

Welcome to the 
Global Village 

Get your board, or modem rather, and 
go netsurfing as the fast breaking 
phenomenum is examined by Alex 
Goldsmith. Networking the global way. 





92 


Exploding the 
A1200 Part 3 


How to get the most out of your Work¬ 
bench 3. All the add-ons and how it all 
works exploded by dynamite expert 
Patrick Howlett. 




AUI A - Z 
Part 3 


Is all this jargon too much? The series 
that gives you the easy access to 
Amiga terminology. Amaze your friends 
and stun your enemies with the latest 
buzzwords.. 


Amiga Guide 

^■ft^^^The programmers’ fav¬ 
orite hypertext viewer is examined and 
simply explained by Edmund Dumbill. 


SPECIAL OFFER 



Great Discount 
Offer! 


You can use this voucher to get 25% off 
CD 32 discs at Comet. Now’s the time 
to take your disc in to see if has won a 
CD 32 and get a great discount on the 
software! 



HARD COPY 


^ C Mastering 
"Tw Amiga DOS 3 

Paul Overaa reads all about it and 
sees if it could make your life a bit more 
straightforward. 



Entertainment 

Now! 


David Taylor and Andy Moss forget 
the serious and delve into the latest 
games to entertain Amiga players. 
Heimdall 2 (Core Design) • Tornado 
(Digital Integration). James Pond III 
(Millenium) • Brian the Lion AGA 
(Psygnosis) • Sleepwalker (Hit Squad) 

• KingPin (Team 17) • Total Carnage 
(ICE) • Lambourgini Challenge (Titus) 

• Manchester United (Krisalis) • 
Naughty Ones (Interactivision) • Kings 
Quest 6 (Sierra) 


AUI Special 

Amiga CD! 
Magazine 

Snuggled in your AUI you’ll find 
another issue of the popular 
Amiga CD! magazine. Packed 
with reviews, 
tips, news and 
gossip, it’s the 
perfect com¬ 
panion to our 
groundbreak¬ 
ing Compact 
Disc. 



Who Does What 

Managing Editor and Publisher 
Antony Jacobson 

Editorial Co-ordinator: David Taylor 
Editorial Assistants: Gideon Overhead, 
Michael Rumbelow 

Contributors: Graham Baldock, Steven 
Broadbent, Ashley Cotter-Cairns, Edmund 
Dumbill, Andy Eskelson, Gary Fenton, Alex 
Goldsmith, Patrick Howlett, Anthony Mael, 
Barry McCarthy, Andy Moss, Paul Overaa, 
Alan Puzey, Michael Rumbelow, Bud 
Vennos, Martin Witton. 

Design: Graham Baldock 

Advertisement Executive: Aine O’Connor 
Advertisement Manager: Robert Dadd 

Copyright 

AUI Limited 

Editorial & Advertising: 

Amiga User International 
48 George Street, London W1H 5RF 
Telephone: 071 487 1076/1072 
Advertising: 071 487 1080/1077 
Fax: 071 224 0547 

Subscriptions Address: AUI Subs. Dept. 
Customer Interface Ltd, Bradley Pavilions, 
Pear Tree Road, Bradley Stoke, 

Bristol BS12 0BQ 
Telephone: 0454 620070 
Fax: 0454 620080 
Published by AUI Limited 

Origination and Colour Reproduction: 

Ford Graphics, Fordingbridge, Hants. 

Distributed by COMAG Ltd 


...And What They 
Used 

Commodore’s Amiga A3000, A2000, A500, 
Citizen’s Swift 240C, Canon’s BH-20 
Bubblejet, Consultron’s CrossDOS, Elec¬ 
tronic Art’s Deluxe Paint IV, Gold Disk’s 
Professional Page, GVP’s A530 Turbo, 
Toshiba’s IDE drive, Supra’s V32 Fax Mo¬ 
dem, Datel’s Action Replay MKIII, ASDG’s 
Art Department Professional, Epson’s GT- 
6500 colour flatbed scanner, Readysoft’s 
AMAX, OpalTech’s Opalvision, Innova- 
tronic’s Directory Opus, JCL’s ColourPic Plus 
and Cabaret, John Veldthuis’ VirusChecker, 
JVC’s HR-D980 Video Recorder, Micro-Sys¬ 
tem’s Scribble!, Macro Systems VLAB, 32bit 
RAM from First Choice Computers, Discov¬ 
ery Software’s Grabbit. 


Amiga User International - an independent 
magazine for Commodore computer users - 
is not connected in any way with Commo¬ 
dore Business Machines UK. It is published 
12 times per year on the first Thursday of the 
month. The publishers do not accept any 
liability for any incorrect statement or errors 
contained in material that may be produced 
from time to time. 

Printed in the U.K. 


Centurion Publications 
Managing Director: Brian Grant 
Publisher: Nick Randolph 


JULY 1994 • AUI 


5 

































































AUI Constant Factors 


The Amiga Dimension 


Will the Amiga survive? Managing 
Editor Antony Jacobson examines 
Commodore’s current crisis. 


T his is the saddest Amiga Di¬ 
mension I’ve had to write. Be¬ 
cause it may be the last in which 
Commodore and the Amiga are 
the way we have known them. 

It’s 35 years or so since Jack 
Tramiel, a survivor of the Auschwitz 
death camp, who had emigrated 
from Europe to Canada, started 
Commodore. The story is that he be¬ 
gan by repairing typewriters before 
making them. Then getting early into 
electronic calculators which were then 
almost as expensive as computers 
are now, he bought a factory in the 
USA which manufactured the CMOS 
chips they needed. Over stretching 
himself, Commodore suffered the first 
of its regular financial crises and 
Tramiel found a saviour in business¬ 
man Irving Gould. 

The story is told that finding 
the factory could produce more CMOS 
chips than the calculators needed, they 
got the idea of putting them into com¬ 
puters - and an electronic giant was 
born. Their first computer, Commo¬ 
dore’s Personal Electronic Transac¬ 
tor, the now legendary PET, long be¬ 
fore IBM, put a computer on desktops 
of the world’s companies. 

The Amiga 

Then Commodore hit the consumer 
market with the Vic 20 - having all of 
20k of RAM. But it literally sold a 
million, the first computer to do that. 
Commodore followed it with the C64 
which is still selling today and has 
probably entered 14 or 15 million 
homes, schools, factories and busi¬ 
nesses. 

I n spite of those two successes 
CBM by 1984 had problems, Tramiel, 
it is said, wanted his sons to take a 
bigger role in the company. Gould did 
not. Tramiel walked out and bought 
the remains of Atari and tried to buy a 
development company that had a hot 
new product and money troubles. That 
company was Amiga. 

The Amiga team borrowed 
some cash from Jack Tramiel at Atari 
but did a deal with Irving Gould at 
Commodore, which must have given 
CBM’s boss some satisfaction. CBM 
ended up paying the cash back to 
Tramiel’s company who had by that 
time started their own ST develop¬ 
ment based on the same Motorola 
68000 chip used by Amiga. In 1985 
out came the Commodore Amiga 1000 
and the rest is history. However, since 
the heady, profitable days of the PET, 
the Vic 20 and the C64, Commodore 
has never achieved rock solid suc¬ 
cess. 


Disasters like the Cl 6, the Plus 
4, problems with PCs, failure to up¬ 
grade the 500 quickly enough or really 
establish the Amiga in business or 
profitable areas such as graphics, the 
CDTV fiasco and the inability to lead 
the field again by bringing out cutting 
edge developments like the triple AAA 
quickly at competitive prices all con¬ 
tributed. 

However, most serious of all, 
was a constant revolving door of top 
brass who somehow got across Irving 
Gould, including one president who 
was escorted from CBM USA head¬ 
quarters by the security guards and 
sued CBM for - and apparently won - 
$9 million, has meant that Commo¬ 
dore stumbled downhill to its present 
state. Even though over the years the 
Amiga has continued to sell and sell. 

The Amiga team 
borrowed some cash 
from Jack Tramiel at 
Atari but did a deal 
with Irving Gould at 
Commodore which 
must have given 
CBIVTs boss some 
satisfaction. 

And what is CBM’s present 
state? Commodore will probably never 
be the same again. And before you 
shout “Hooray!”, that means that at 
this moment the Amiga is in danger of 
disappearing with Commodore who 
have had to get protection from the 
Courts in Bahamas where for tax rea¬ 
sons it was corporately registered. 
Protection from whom? Apparently 
from the banks who lent it money to go 
on through the debts it has piled up 
over recent years, and protection from 
creditors to whom it owed money. 

Squashing the 
_ Amiga _ 

The unconfirmed but widely believed 
story is that Philips, knowing of CBM’s 
dire financial position, made an offer 
for Commodore. The logic would seem 
to be of “squashing” the Amiga, then 
with the CD 32 out of the way their 


limping CD-I would have a better 
chance of success. It is suggested 
that when the banks heard of this offer, 
being bankers they wanted to grab 
whatever they could - bankers are 
notoriously stupid, shortsighted and 
prone to panic. 

They are supposed to have 
insisted that Commodore take the of¬ 
fer - which wasn’t thought by Irving 
Gould and Medhi Ali, CBM’s executive 
boss, to be acceptable. The big 
instituitional shareholders, insurance 
companies et all, who really owned 
the largest part of CBM, got scared 
and dumped their shares. And CBM’s 
stock market value fell like a stone. So 
the banks threatened to call in their 
loans. 

Commodore decided that the 
only way out was to sell themselves off 
- or the Amiga technology - to another 
company and asked the Court in Ba¬ 
hamas to put up a fence around CBM 
against the banks and creditors and 
give it time to fix a deal. 

I am told, the same day that 
Commodore hit the skids into the 
Bahamaiam court, Philips announced 
a big new marketing drive worldwide. 
Wow! What a coincidence! 

Profitable UK 

As I commented last month, a number 
of big companies have shown interest 
and lots of small ones have since 
called Commodore hoping either to 
buy the rights to the Amiga as a stand 
alone or incorporate the chip sets into 
other products. 

The irony, for us in the UK, is 
that Commodore here is a profitable 
entity. It is still, as of the time of writing 
this, in business. The same is true for 
Germany and other European coun¬ 
tries. The staff, in the UK, are continu¬ 
ing in a calm and even confident way. 
The trouble, it seems, is at the heart 
not the limbs of Commodore. 

The Amiga is a global brand 
that has considerable value, particu¬ 
larly with the tremendous loyalty the 
machine has developed among its 5 
or 6 million users. But any major cor¬ 
poration that takes over must invest in 
the next generation of processors like 
the PowerPC chip from Motorola. It 
will need to strengthen the Amiga’s 
image and provide extra marketing 
muscle. It may find it necessary to 


make a very sharp separation of iden¬ 
tity of the Amiga between the home/ 
console market and the profitable pro¬ 
fessional applications Amiga potential 
in such areas as video and multime¬ 
dia. It perhaps should concentrate on 
the successful UK and the rest ol 
Europe first before even considering 
the tougher USA. 

Most of all it will need to give 
the wider buying public a much more 
recognisable sense of the Amiga’s 
presence as a real contender with the 
PCs, Macs, CD-I, 3DO or the other 
emerging multimedia platforms. As the 
saying goes, ‘If you’ve got it, flaunt it’. 

It has been said that the Am¬ 
iga has survived despite not because 
of Commodore. The Amiga is undeni¬ 
ably a brilliant computer. And when 
one company who were interested in 
buying the Amiga asked why they 
should, they were told, and not by 
CBM, that if they didn’t, somebody 
else would. 

I still think that is very likely. 
The Amiga and CBM in the UK and 
Europe are commercially viable and 
so deserving of survival even in this 
ruthless market-driven world. 


Rumours 

One UK PC magazine commented 
contemptuously that when they had 
asked for details “of the company’s 
demise.” Commodore’s reply, in the 
UK, was “Rumours of our death have 
been greatly exaggerated,” protested 
a spokesman, banging furiously on 
the lid of a large pine box.’ 

Well, this is a sad Amiga Di¬ 
mension because corporately CBM, 
whom I think of somewhat irritatedly 
like an old friend who drives you crazy 
with frequently silly behaviour, might 
be close to falling into that pine box. 
But the Amiga, its greatest asset, 
should survive. There are some things, 
natural justice seems to say, that are 
just too good to die before their time. 
And the Amiga, I expect you will agree, 
is one of them. 

So don’t worry, you will find 
AUI here next month to keep you in¬ 
formed of various stages in the prob¬ 
ably still continuing and, we hope suc¬ 
cessful, saga. And we’ll still be telling 
you what to use on your Amiga and 
how to make the most enjoyable and 
effective use of it. And we will go on 
doing that, I hope, for a long time yet. 
When we stop, perhaps that is when 
you should really start to worry if the 
Amiga will survive.. 

Antony Jacobson 
Managing Editor 


6 


AUI • JULY 1994 



















































INSIGHT:DINOSAURS is the second title in the INSIGHT series, a lavishly 
produced title rich in multimedia. You can be assured INSIGHT:Dinosaurs will 
be visually stunning and technically correct as the title is being produced in 
association with the British Natural History Museum, one of the world’s 
foremost centres of excellence in the field of paleontology. A unique title for the 
whole family, produced in a concise, easy to read style which allows it to be 
used for reference and browsing alike. 

A comprehensive A-Z section gives in depth information on the best known 
dinosaurs from Allosaurus to Velociraptor. 

Life of the Dinosaurs covers Anatomy, Attack And Defense, Herbivores, 
Carnivores, Climate, Pack Hunters, Lone Hunters, Herds, Scavengers, 
Descendants and much more. 

World of the Dinosaurs covers Death Of The Dinosaurs, Shifting Continents, 
Family Tree, Fossil Hunters and Hunting and much more. 



DINO SAW is a Chinese jigsaw with 25 different dinosaur puzzles 





DINO PAINT is a simple to use children’s colouring book 

to colour. 


DINO QUIZ is a multimedia quiz for one or two players 

aspects of Dinosaurs. 


TEXT - Comprehensive text coverage 


PHOTOS & ILLUSTRATIONS - Stunning photos and illustrations from the 
Natural History Museum and its comprehensive photo library. 



PANDORA’S CD shows you just what can be achieved with multimedia and 
your Commodore CD system, an all original promotional disc containing 
something for everyone, Five Senses production, the Nuclear industry, 
number counting game, Milton Keynes guidebook, jukebox, clipart library, 
photo library, textures library, sound effects library and a sampler of 
INSIGHT:Technology. Sample the wonderful world of Optonica multimedia. 


GRAPHICS AND ANIMATIONS - Computer generated 2D and 3D animations 
bring to life the world of the Dinosaurs. 

NARRATIONS - Hear the story of the Dinosaurs. 

MOTION VIDEO - Video clips bring to life this lost world! 

A comprehensive cross reference index and online glossary give you quick and 
easy access to the information you need. 


FOR MORE INFORMATION OR PLACE AN ORDER PLEASE CALL OR FAX 
JENNY BURGE ON TEL:0455-558282 FAX:0455 559386 
PAYMENT BY CHEQUE OR POSTAL ORDER, SORRY NO CREDIT CARDS 
PLEASE ALLOW 28 DAYS FOR DELIVERY - USUALLY WITHIN 48 HOURS 
1 THE TERRACE, HIGH STREET, LUTTERWORTH, LEICS, UK, LE17 4BA. 

















































Welcome to the July 1994 
SunerPisk! Two big changes 
this month, both should be to 
vour advantage. Gary Fenton 
guides you through this 
month’s digital delicacies. 



Chad Randall's fabulous Iconian icon editor. 


here are two things you 
should know about Super- 2) 
Disk 39. Firstly, the disk uses 
the FFS (Fast Filing System) 
which means the disk can hold an 
extra 50k of data, but it also means 
that die-hard 1.3 users can’t access 
the disk, so it’s only 2.x and 3.x 
compatible. Sorry.(Time to upgrade?) 
However, all is not lost for those with 
access to CDTV (with keyboard) or 
A570s. We’ve put the 1.3 programs 
from the SuperDisk on the cover CD. 

So you can strip them off and use 
them. What about that for technology? 

Secondly, we’re not using the 
Commodore Installer program (hooray!) 
because it was causing too much 
confusion with you lot and only one 
program could be unarchived at a time. 

Instead we’re using GuiArc 
which is Freeware and was program¬ 
med by Patrick van Beem from The 
Netherlands. It’s very user friendly and 
allows you to unarchive as many of the 
programs as you like in just one go! 

Wow! Here’s what to do: 

1) If you don’t have a hard disk then 
please format two blank disks. See 
your Amiga Workbench manual for 


more details. 

Now, reset your Amiga and boot 
up from the AUl Coverdisk. Hard 
disk users don’t have to do that, 
just insert the Coverdisk when you 
are on Workbench. (If hard disk 
users encounter problems then 
boot from the Coverdisk.) 

3) Double click on the SuperDisk 39 
disk icon and then double click on 
the GuiArc drawer icon. Do NOT 
click on the SuperDisk Install icon! 
Finally, double click on the GuiArc 
program icon and after 10 seconds 
or so the GuiArc program will 
appear. Close the “About GuiArc” 
information window in the center of 
the screen by clicking on it or 
clicking on its close gadget. 

4) Note that there are two sides to this 
window and both sides look the 
same. On the LEFT side click once 
on the button marked “DFO”, 
assuming the Coverdisk is in your 
DFO drive. Waitforthecomputerto 
read the disk directory and then 
double clickon the word “Programs” 
(it’s in blue) that appears in the 
directory listing on the left side of 
the screen. “Programs” is the 


directory that the archived 
programs are stored in. 

5) The right side of the screen should 
be showing the contents of the RAM 
Disk which is its default directory. 
This means that the programs on 
the left will be unarchived 
(decompressed) to the RAM Disk 
on the right. You need at least 1.3 
megabytes of free RAM if you want 
to unarchive all of the programs to 
the RAM Disk in one go. A1200 
owners and anyone else with at 
least 2Mb total RAM should be okay. 

To change the destination 
directory from RAM Disk, just click on 
one of the device buttons at the bottom 
of the right hand window under RAM 
Disk. If the name of your drive isn’t 
there then just click on the DRIVES 
button on the bottom right half of the 


screen. A list of your mounted drives 
appears, so just click once on the drive 
you want to use. If you have a hard 
disk called Work: then click once on 
Work: when its name appears in the 
window. You can then choose a 
suitable destination directory on your 
hard disk if you like. 

Floppy disk users must use 
the RAM Disk (the default) or an 
external disk drive (inserted with a 
blank formatted disk) as the destination 
device. 

6) Click once (on the left side) on the 
names of the programs that you 
wish to unarchive. You can select 
as many you want as long as you 
have enough free space on the 
destination drive (on the right). If 
you don’t know how much space 
you have free then just try selecting 
a few files to start with and see 
what happens. Please bear in mind 
that all of the programs will NOT fit 
onto a single floppy disk, except a 
high density disk if your computer 
can use them. 

7) Now that you’ve selected some 
files to unarchive, click once on the 
button marked Ext/Cp on the LEFT 
side of the window. Or you can 
simply press E on the keyboard. A 
window will pop up where you can 
followthe computer’s progress. The 
window will disappear when 
everything is finished. 

8) Hard disk users can quit the 
program and use the new programs 
which will be on the hard disk. If 
you unarchived the programs to 
your RAM Disk then you must now 



MinPac - Fun on your Workbench screen! 



8 


AUl • JULY 1994 


















































































































































To copy the programs from the 
RAM Disk, quitfrom GuiArcand double 
click on the Ram Disk icon which is on 
your Workbench screen. You’ll see all 
of the new programs appear which 
you’ve just unarchived. Insert a blank 
formatted disk and drag the new 
program’s icons from the Ram Disk 
overtothe blankdisk’s icon. The Amiga 
will copy them onto your blank disk. 
Only half of the programs will fit onto a 
single disk so have another empty 
disk ready. That’s it! 

GBIanker 

This is no ordinary screen blanker 
because it’s made up from 13 different 
screen blankers that do different things 
when your Amiga hasn’t be touched 

f -\ 

_ Documentation _ 

Most of the programs are provided with a documentation file, either as plain 
ASCII text or an AmigaGuide file which can be read using MultiView. We 
strongly suggest that you read these files which normally tell you how to install 
and use the programs that accompany them. 

If you double click on a text file from Workbench then the computer will 
try to load the text viewer program which is named in the icon’s ToolType. The 
default text viewer is “c:more” for text files and “MultiView” for AmigaGuide 
files. You can load the text files into most text editors and word processors, 
or you can change the ToolType to use the text viewer of your choice. (See 
your Workbench manual regarding ToolTypes). 

Alternatively, copy the program More from the Coverdisk’s C: directory 
L to your current C: directory. ^ 

copy them onto a permanent disk, for certain amount of time. Some 
like a floppy disk, or else they will be blankers are weird while others are 
lost when you reset the computer. really interesting to watch. 


Regular In | El Ha 


E3 


o 


I 


a 


4 . 


Ri Js 

r." sj 


I=F 


PF 


Selected 11 El IB 



fiTTfi 





LhaDir.DOpus is very handy if you have Directory Opus. 


The installation script that 
comes with GBIanker uses Comm¬ 
odore’s Installer which it assumes is on 
your Workbench disk. If you don’t have 
Installer you can just run GBIanker by 
clicking on its icon which I added for 
you. It needs reqtools.library (supplied). 

_Iconian_ 

This is a fantastic icon creating package 
written by Chad Randall who very 
kindly finished of this latest version of 
Iconian just for readers of AUI\ Thanks 
a lot for that, Chad! 

It runs on Amigas with Work¬ 
bench 3.x only (1200, 4000) and pro¬ 
vides loads of painting features that 
you would normally find in a top paint 
package. Iconian is Shareware so if 
you like Chad’s program and you send 
him the $10 registration fee, he’ll send 
you his thanks and a key file which 
unlocks extra features in Iconian. 


run RexxMast (supplied with 
Workbench) and copy the Lhadir.dopus 
file into your Rexx: directory. Read the 
instructions on howto configure DOpus 
to use these clever new commands. 

Virus Checker 
_ 6.41 _ 

It’s been a while since AUI has put a 
virus killer on the coverdisk, so now is 
a good a time as any. This is the very 
latest version which now uses brain 
files and is alert to all new viruses. 

_IViniPac_ 

This is a tiny Workbench Pacman game 
which is only 8k in size! Click on the 
start button to begin a game and use 
the cursor keys to control the character. 
Different levels can be played by 
selecting a new one from the Prefs 
window which appears when you click 
on the Prefs button. 


LhaDir.DOpus 

If you’ve got Directory Opus then you’ll 
love this little program which enables 
you to manipulate Lha files without 
having to unarchive them. You need to 


BigListMaker 

Have you ever tried finding one 
particular file that you know you’ve got 
hiding in your disk box someone but 
can’t remember where it is? Big List 



It's big, bad, mean, and it's back! Virus Checker 6.41 


JULY 1994 • AUI 


9 












































































































AUI Super Disk No.39 


1oudsHGH l.e© Danny flnor Tn 1994 

" □ |0K ! |ia|- 




CloudsAGA: Ah, so that's how God does it! 


Maker makes a big list (!) of all the files 
held on all your disks and hard disk and 
turns it into a library. Then if you ever 
need to find a specific file just ask 
BigListMaker and it’ll tell you exactly 
which disk and directory you’ll find your 
file in. 



TheClipBoard Enhancerisawonderful 
Commodity which makes up for the 
fact that nearly all programs use just 
one clipboard unit when the Amiga 
actually has 256 of them! 

If you multitask and perform a 
“copy” operation in your text editor and 
then do another “copy” operation in 
another program, the first thing you 
copied will be replaced with the second 
thing you copied. This shouldn’t have to 
happen, not now that you’ve got CBE! 


joystick. The music’s great and the 
action’s fast, but watch out for those 
nasties! 

If you have trouble running this 
game (I do on my 1200) then reset your 
Amiga and immediately hold down both 
mouse buttons to enter the Early 
Startup Screen. Go into the Display 
Options screen and select the Original 
chip type and exit the screen. Now go 
into the Boot Options screen and select 
Disable CPU Caches and exit once 
more and then click on Boot. Now load 
Blob and enjoy! 

Chess 

I shouldn’t have to tell you what this 
game is or how to play it! Just load it up 
and try to beat the computer -1 bet you 
can’t! There are pull down menus which 
alter the gameplay and even a hint 
feature if you get stuck. 


WBLock 

A simple program to stop simple people 
from using your Amiga without your 
permission! Drop this into your 
WBStartup drawer and Workbench 
becomes password protected. It’ll stop 
little brothers and sisters from using 
Workbench, but not loading and playing 
floppy based games. 


_ Washer _ 

Do you have a dirty monitor? Are you 
simply not bothered to clean it? How 
would you like someone to clean it for 
you? We’ve included a monitor cleaning 
service with every Coverdisk - just load 
this program through Workbench and 
you’re monitor will be professionally 
cleaned. But don’t forget to pay... 


Blob-A-Blob! 

A great platform game from AmigaLive. 
Grab your joystick and cover all those 
spaces to carry on to the next level. 
Some squares have buttons which can 
be activated by pulling down on the 

f Installing > 
Tiger Cub 

Apparently some people had prob¬ 
lems installing the Tiger Cub pro¬ 
gram which was given away free on 
the May issue of AUI. To rectify this, 
just drag the SuperDisk Install icon 
on this month’s disk over to the May 
Coverdisk which will replace the old 
Install script. Make sure you write 
enable the May Coverdiskfirst. Then 
follow the unarchiving instructions 
Jn the May issue of AUI. ^ 


_RFS_ 

This is the Professional Filing System 
which is an alternative to Commodore’s 
OFS and FFS. Installing this system 
and formatting your disks as PFS will 
improve disk writing speeds by 2 to 3 
times and reading speeds by up to 
50%. Also, PFS disks shoukd never 
become unvalidated. 

PFS only works with floppy 
disks and is a Shareware product. You’ll 
be surprised how fast your floppy disks 
become, but please read the PFS 
documentation first. We cannot be held 
responsible if you lose any data. 

CloudsAGA 

CloudsAGA is a calm, peaceful program 
that generates random clouds on the 


NO SUPERDISK? 


Yes, consult your newsagent! But 
we’ve had so many complaints about 
readers not getting disks that we’re 
trying out a new idea. We can’t be 
responsible for what happens at the 
end of a long chain of different 
organisations who handle the 
magazine when it leaves us, 
especially outside this country. We 
know that someone appears to be 
taking disks off copies of the 
magazine in some countries but we 
don’t know whether they are being 


stolen or taken off as a protection 
against a large sales tax having to 
be paid. 

So what we propose is this: if 
you live in the U.K. you will have to 
consult your newsagent in the usual 
way. However, if you are outside the 
U.K. we want to help you get the 
advantages of the SuperDisk so if 
you send us £1 in sterling (Inter¬ 
national Money Order etc) to cover 
postage etc and we will send you the 
month’s SuperDisk. Okay? 


Faulty Disk? 

In the event that your AUI coverdisk fails to load (because of a read/write error 
etc), please return it to the following address for a free replacement. Allow 28 
days for delivery. 

AUI Faulty Disks, 138 Lambeth Walk, London, SE11 6EW. 

Don’t forget to include your name and full postal address in BLOCK capticals. 
Collector’s tokens from the back of cereal packets are not required, thank you. 


screen. The idea is that you can use 
these lovely images as backgrounds 
and textures in other programs like 
DPaint, Scala, MediaPoint, orwhatever. 

You can choose any screen 
mode you like in up to 128 colours and 
save the screen as an IFF image. To 
do this you need to have the iff.library 
in your Libs: directory. If you don’t have 
one already then there’s a version of 
this in the libs: drawer within the 
CloudsAGA drawer itself. 


Burning 
Chrome BBS 

Thanks to Simon Gardner who 
helped us to obtain some of this 
month’s programs. If you have a 
modem you can contact Simon’s 
BBS on 0428 727060 (19.2K HST 
DS+ B32bis). This is not a voice 
number so you can’t make funny 
noises down the phone! This is a 
modem only number! 


_ Compatibility _ 

Workbench 1.3 users can’t use SuperDisk 39 this month because it’s a FFS 
disk for Workbench 2 and 3 owners only. (Upgrade! Upgrade!) But see our 
earlier notes on the 1.3 programs on the cover CD. All programs run on AGA 
Amigas and any machine running Workbench 2.x or 3.x unless otherwise 
stated. We’ve tried all of the programs on an A1200 and an A3000 and they 
work perfectly. 

If you can’t get a program to work then start by reading the docum¬ 
entation on the disk carefully. We’ve tried to make it as easy as possible for 
you but if you do become stuck then boot from YOUR Workbench disk (or 
hard disk) and try to run the program again. If all else fails, good old Andy 
the Answer Man will be able to help if you write to him at Amiga Answers. 


Reader’s 

Contributions 

We are always looking for new and 
original programs to put on our 
coverdisk. If you would like to see 
your name and program feature in 
AUI then please contact AUI at the 
address given in the front of the 
magazine. Alternatively, give us a 
call if you think we would be interested 
in your program (071 487 4284 ext 
1071). The shorter the better, under 
100k including any libraries - unless 
it’s brilliant! Compiled AMOS 
programs are welcomed. 


Shareware 

Just a brief reminder that some of the 
programs on our Coverdisk are 
Shareware. This means that you can 
try them out, but if you regularly use 
them you should send a registration 
fee to the author. Registration fees are 
between £5 and £20 and sometimes 
the author will send you the latest 
version in return. You can send an 
International Money Order, or 
preferably a cheque but many authors 
don’t accept cheques if they are outside 
the UK. If you want to risk sending cash 
in a registered post, it’s up to you. We 
wouldn’t advise it but it’s your money... 


10 


AUI • JULY 1994 























































BITMAP BROTHERS VOL1 

only £1399 

Xenon, Cadaver and Speedball II 

DREAM TEAM 

only £1399 

Terminator II, Simpsons, and W.W.F. 

ER only £22.99 

Silent Service II, Red Baron, Railroad Tycoon 
and Perfect General 

SPACE LEGENDS 

onfy £19.99 

MegatraveUer 1. Elia, and Wing Commander 

YARD WINNERS 2 only £20.99 

Zool, Jimmy Whies Whirlwind Snooker, 
Sensible Soccer, and Elie 

COMBAT CLASSICS 2 only £20.99 

F19 Stealh Fighter, Silent Service II and 

Pacfic Islands 

BIG BOX only £15.99 

Captain Blood, Tin Tin on the Moon, Safari Guns, 
Teenage Queen, Bubble Plus, Purple Saturn Day* 
Krypton Egg, Jumping Jackson, BoBo, Hostages 

TEST DRIVE 2 COLLECTION 

onfy £15.99 

Muscle Cars, Calfornia Challenge 
European Challenge, Duel, and Super Cars 

9GB0K2 only £1990 

Back to the Future III, R-Type, IK+, Real 
Ghostbusters, Def of the Earth, TV Sports FootbaU, 
Shanghai, Armalyte, Sinbad, Bomboozal 

THE DIZZY COLLECTION onfy £1399 

Fast Food, Kwik Snax. Fantasy World Dizzy. 
Treasure Island Dizzy, and Magic Land Dizzy 

4 WHEEL DRIVE only £19.99 

LotusEspri, CelicaGT4Rally. Team Suzuki, 
and Com bo Racer 

POWER PACK onfy £14.99 

Xenon 2. TV Sports Football, Bloodwych 
and Lombard Rally 

HOLLYWOOD COLLECTION only £1399 
RoboCop, Ghostbusters 2, Indiana Jones, 

Batman the Movie 

? only £13.99 
New Zealand Story, Bubble Bobble, 
and Rainbow Islands 

COMBAT CLASSICS only £20.99 

F15 Strike Eagle II, 68S Attack Sub 
and Team Yankee 

K1XX TRIPLE PACK 1 (SPORTS) only £1299 
Microprose Soccer, Panza Kick Boxing, and 2D Pool 

JOLLECTION only £13.99 

D. Dragon, Shadow Warrior, and D. Ninja 

NAPOLBONICS only £16.99 

Waterloo, Borodino^ and Austerliz 

THE GREATEST only £19.99 

Jim my Whlefs Whirlwind Snooker, Lure d the Temptress* 
and Dune 

ID WINNERS ONLY £1399 
KickOff II, Pipemania, Space Ace 
and Populous 

ANIMATION CLASSICS only £27.99 

Space Ace, Dragon's Lair II 
and Wrath of the Demon 

STRATEGY MASTER only £21.99 

Deuteros, Populous, Hunter. 

Chessplayer 2150 and Spirts of Excalibur 

SUFBRR3HTER 

onfy £1399 

Plighter. W.W.F., and Final FigN 

MEGA MIX 

only £1299 

Leander, Agony andOrk 

DiZZYS EXCELLENT ADVENTURES 
only £1399 

Dizzy Panic, Bubble Dizzy, Dizzy Prince of Yolk Folk 
Spellbound Dizzy and Kwik Snak 

2 HOT 2 HANDLE 

only £1299 

Golden Axe, Total Recall, Shadow Warrior, 
and Super Off Road Racing 

SPORTS COLLECTION 

only £1299 

Run the Gauntlet, Pro Tennis Tour 
and World Cup Soccer (Italia '90) 

SPORTS MASTERS 

onfy £19.99 

PGA Tour Go1, Indy 500, Advantage Tennis* 
and European Championship 1992 

KIXX TRIPLE PACK II (ACTION) 

only £1299 

Streetfiglter, Rick Dangerous II, 
and Last Crusade Action 

ACTION 5 

only £19.99 

Rick Dangerous II. Ghostbusters II, Gunship 

Super Ski and Hard Driving 



LARGE SELECTION OF CD32 AVAILABLE - CALL FOR DETAILS 


TOP TITLES 


AMIGA TOP TITLES AMIGA TOP TITLES AMIGA 

£19.99 Civilisation.£23.99 J. Madden's Football. £1399 

£39.99 Civilisation A1200.£27. 

rade + clock £49.99 C.Y's Air Com bat.£20.99 K240 . £16.99 


TOP TITLES 


AMIGA TOP TITLES 


A500+ 1M< 

A6001 Meg Upgrade 
0.5 Meg Upgrade + clock .. £25.99 

A320 Airbus.£2399 

A320 Airbus USA.£23.99 

Another World.£1299 

A-Train .£23.99 


Cohort II.£19.99 KGB. £16.99 

Combat Air Patrol.£18.99 Killing Game Show. £11.! 


Cover Girl Poker .£1299 

Cr< ‘ 

Ci 


_ Putty.... £1299 

Jurassic Park. £16.99 Raikoad Tycoon . £1299 

Reach for the Skies. £19.99 

Red Baron . £15.99 

Road Rash. £16.99 

Robin Hood (Millenium). £9.99 

Robocod. £15.99 


Killing C 

Kingdom of Germany*. £19.99 

Cars III.£9.99 Kingmaker . £19.99 

il Kingdom Dizzy.£13.99 Kings Quest VI * (A1200) .. £37.99 


A-Train Con Set.£1399 Cyberspace*.£23.99 Knight Mare. £11.99 Robocop III. £8.99 Super League Manager. £16.99 

AddamsFamily.£7.99 DalekAttack.£1299 Knights of the Sky. £1299 RoboSports. £16.99 Super Mario Brothers.£18.99 

Airbucks 1.2 (5/6/or 1200) .. £19.99 Darkmere.£16.99 Lambourghini USA Challenged6.99 Rookies* . £17.99 Super Space Invaders.£7.99 


(5/6/or 1200) 

Air Com bat Patrol.£19.99 

Air Force Commander.£19.99 

Alfred Chicken.£1999 

Alien Breed 2.£17.99 

Alien Breed Special Edition .. £9.99 

Aliens III .£1999 

American Gladiators.£1999 

Amos (Easy) .£2399 

Amos 30.£2399 

Amos Compiler .£19.99 

Amos Professional..£54.99 

Amos Professional Compiler £23.99 

Amos The Creator.£36.99 

Apocalypse .£19.99 

Arabian Nights 500/1200 .... £19.99 

Armourgeddon...£15.99 

Armourgeddon II *.£19.99 


Das Boot.£11. 

D-Day ...£16.99 


Deluxe Music Con Set.£74.99 Leeds Utd. £16.99 


Deep Core *.£16.99 Legacy 


Dennis 500/1200 .£17.99 Legacy of SK/asil. £1399 

Desert Strike.£19.99 - - - 

Desert Strike II ‘(Jungle Str) £20.99 

Detroit.£1399 

Diggers (CD) .£2399 

Disney Animation Studio.£74.99 

Disposable Hero.£16.99 Lemmings II 


iht.. 


Dracula .£19.99 

Dreadnoughts.£2299 

Dreamlands.£19.99 

Dream Web*.£27.99 

Dune.£19.99 


AMIGA TOP TITLES 

Star Trek 25th Anniversary* £23.99 TV Sports Boxing . 

Steel Empire... £20.99 Turrican 3. 

Stereo Master. £26.99 Turtles II. 

Street Fighter II. £11.99 Twilight 2000 . 

Striker. £16.99 Ultima VI. 

Sub.£21.99 Universal Masters. 

Super Cauldron. £1399 Uridium II . 

Robocod A1200. £1399 Superfrog . £1399 Utopia. 

Robocop III. £8.99 Super League Manager.£1399 Utopia New World. 

RaKa Qrv-ii+e ciRQQ Super Mario Brothers.£18.99 Utopia II*. 

Super Space Invaders.£7.99 Video Kid. 

RyderCup . £16.99 Super SWIV*... £16.99 Viking Fields of Conquest .. 

Sabre Team . £1399 Syndicate . £23.99 Voyage Beyond Data Disc ... 

Sabre Team A1200 . £19.99 Syndicate Data Disc *. £14.99 Walker . 

Scrabble (US Gold). £18.99 Test Drive III *. £15.99 War in the Gulf. 

Second Samurai. £17.99 TFX A1200. £23.99 Waxworks. 

Legend. £11.99 Sensible Soccer 92-93. £16.99 Theatre of Death. £18.99 Whales Voyage. 

Legend II (Worldsof Legend) £1399 Settlers. £21.99 The Games *92 Espana. £20.99 White Death (1 Meg). 

Legend of Kyrandia. £19.99 SHADOW BEAST 11. £11.99 Their Finest Hour. £19.99 u/lklfi mUMAKiDFR 

Lemmings. £1399 Shadow of the Beast III. £11.99 ThunderhawkAH-73M . £21.99 "inu vuMMMnucn 

Lemmings and Data Disk .. £19.99 Shadow Worlds. £16.99 Tip Off. £1399 Wiz Kid. 

1 ■— " £19.99 Silent Service II. £1299 Toki.£7.99 Wiz N Liz. 

£10.99 Sim Ant. £2299 Toon World*. £16.99 Woody’s World. 

£15.99 Sim Earth. £16.99 Tornado. £23.99 W.W.F. 

£16.99 Sim Life A1200/500 . £19.99 Total Carnage. £16.99 W.W.F. II. 

£1299 Simon the Sorcerer. £23.99 Troddlers. £1399 YolJoe! 


Lambourghini USA Challenged399 

Lawn Mower Man *. £16.99 

Leander. £10.99 


£23.99 


.£23.99 Lemmings - Data Disk- 


Lemmings-Stand Alone.... £15.99 
Little Divil '" cnn 

Links 


Dungeon/Chaos.£19.99 

Elvira II - Cerberus.£23.99 

Epic.£19.99 

European Champions.£1399 

Eye of the Beholder .£1299 

Eye of the Beholder II.£23.99 


Assassin.£1399 Dune II.£19.99 

AT.AC.£2399 

B17 Flying Fortress.£2399 

Bane of the Cosmic Forge .. £24.99 

BARBARIAN II (Psyg).£10.99 

Bart vs the World*.£16.99 

Batman Returns*.£1399 

Battle Chess II.£1399 

Battle Isle'93.£20.99 

Battle Isle II...£2299 

Battle Toads . £16.99 

Beavers.£16.99 

Beneath the Steel Sky.£19.99 

Birds of Prey.£9.99 

Black Crypt.£16.99 

Blade of Destiny.£30.99 

Blastar.£1399 

Blob.£1399 

Blue Max.£11.99 

Body Blows.£16.99 

Body Blows Galactic .£17.99 

Boot 


Liquid Kids .. £16.99 Sleepwalker 500/1200 . £14.99 Trolls 500/1200 . £16.99 Zool 500/1200 . 

Loom . £10.99 Snow Bros. £16.99 TV Sports Baseball. £11.99 Zool II. 


Lost Vikings. £1399 Soccer Kid 500/1200. £1399 

Lost Treasures of Infocom .. £2399 Soup Trek*. £1399 

Lotus Turbo Challenge III .. £1399 Space 1889. £16.99 

Ml Tank Platoon. £11.99 SpaceGun. £1299 

MacDonald Land. £9.99 Space Hulk. £23.99 

Maelstrom (1 meg) . £23.99 Space Crusade + Upgrade.. £1399 

Eye of the Beholder II.£2399 Magic Boy *. £16.99 Space Quest IV. £2399 

F15 Strike Eagle II.£1299 Man Utd Premier* . £19.99 Special Forces . £23.99 

FI 17A Stealth Fighter .£23.99 Mario is Missing. £1399 Starflightll. £10.99 


AMIGA 

£11.99 
£16.99 
£11.99 
£23.99 
£1299 
£16.99 
£17.99 
£16.99 
£11.99 
£17.99 
£1399 
£15.99 
, £9.99 
£18.99 
£19.99 
£21.99 
£19.99 
£1299 

£11.99 

£15.99 
£19.99 
£16.99 
.. £7.99 
.. £8.99 
£16.99 
£1399 
£16.99 


EDUCATIONAL 

ADI English All Ages each £1399 
ADI French All Ages each £1399 
ADI Maths All Ages each.. £16.99 
Fun School 2 All Ages each £6.99 
Fun School 3 All Ages each £13.99 
Fun School 4 AH Ages each £1399 
Noddy's Playtime . £1399 


FI9 Stealth Fighter.£1299 

F29 Retaliator .£7.99 

Falcon.£9.99 


Falcon Mission Disk I .£6.99 

Falcon Mission Disk II .£399 

Fate of Atlantis (Adv).£25.99 

£30.99 Fate of Atlantis (Arc) .£16.99 

- Fatm an 500/1200.£16.99 

Final Fight.£7.99 

Fire and Ice.£15.99 

FireStone HD Scenery.£13.99 

Flashback .£20.99 MrNutz . £16.99 

£19.99 Football Manager III*.£15.99 Myth. £8.99 

Brutal Sports Football .£1399 Free DC.£18.99 Nick Faldo Golf. £23.99 

- - ‘ - - Nicky II. £1399 


Mean Arenas*. £16.99 

Micro Machines. £16.99 

Microprose Golf . £16.99 

Midwinter II. £1299 

Might of Magic III . £2399 

Moonstone. £10.99 

Monkey Island. £1299 

Monkey Island II. £25.99 

Mortal Kombat. £1399 

Mouse (Switchable) . £9.99 

Morph. £15.99 


with Labels boxe< 

10x35 DS DD 
20x35 DS 
30x3.5 DS 
50x35 DS 
100 x 35 DS 
Please add 


in 10's 

. £5.99 

.... £11.99 
.... £15.99 
.... £21.99 
£39.99 


per 10 discs when 


ordering to cover P 4 P 


Bubba 'NStix.£1399 Fronteer (ELITE 2).£19.9 

Buck Rogers .£19.99 Fury ofthe Furries.£20.99 

" 1 ~ *“ - Global f ■ 


Buck RogersII*.£20.99 


il Effect.£16.99 


N. Mansell World Champ .. £20.99 
Network Q Rally. £16.99 


ting Darts.£7.99 Global Gladiators.£19.99 Noddys Big Adventure. £16.99 

- Globdule .£19.99 Norty Ones (CD32). £1399 


_ing_JUm.. 

Burn Up.£1399 

Cadaver - the pay off.£10.99 

Caesar.£1399 G. Gooch Cricket.£19.99 

Caesar deluxe.£19.99 Graham Taylor.£9. 

Campaign.£2299 "--- ‘ r - 

Campaign Mission Disk.£10.99 

Campaign II.£2399 

Canon Fodder .£19.99 


Goal/Kick Off III.£19.99 One Step Beyond. £1399 

GobliinsII_.£19.99 Outlanders*. £1399 

Overdrive. £17.99 

Overkill... £14.99 

Grand Proc (Formula).£23.99 Pacific Islands - T.Yankee II £20.99 

Gunship2000.£23.99 Pacific Islands II *. £21.99 

Harlequin.£14.99 Parasol Stars. £15.99 

Patrician. £19.99 


_ Harpoon (1 Meg) .£19.99 

Captive.£11.99 Hamer Assault AV8B.£23.99 PGA Golf Tour +. £20.99 

Captive II.£17.99 Hero'sQuest II .£16.99 PGA Courses Disk. £10.99 

Car and Driver*.£23.99 Hill Street Blues.£7.99 Pinball Dreams. £1399 


Carl Lewis Challenge.£1299 

Castles .£1399 

Castles Data Disc .£11.! 

Castles II.£23.99 

Castle of Dr Brain .£15.99 


Pinball Dreams II . £1399 

PinbaH Fantasies (CD32) .. £19.99 
Populous II - The Challenge £11.99 

Populous II + (1 Meg). £23.99 

Power and Glory. £19.99 

-... ... Power Up Compilation.... £12.99 

Championship Manager'93 £16.99 James Pond III (Op Starfish) £16.99 Premier Manager . £1399 

ChaseHQII.£8.99 J. White's Whirlwind.£16.99 Premier Manager II. £1399 

Chuck Rock II .£399 J. Barnes (1 Meg) .£15.99 PushOver . £8.99 


Hired Guns.£23.99 

Historyline 1914-18.£21.99 

Hook.£8.99 

International Open Golf.£1399 

_ __ Ishar II 500/1200 .£19.99 

ChaosEngine .£1399 JaguarXJ220....£16.99 


[SHOP OPEN 
10am - 6pm 

AT 

I 120a 
MYDDLETON 
I ROAD 

| WOOD GREEN 
LONDON 
N224NQ. 

081 

I 889 9172 

SHOP PRICES 
MAY VARY. 


AMIGA BUDGET TITLES UNDER £10 


688 Attack Sub.£9.99 

Afterburner.£6.99 

Altered Beast.£399 

Arkanoid II.£399 

Atomino.£399 

Barbarian.£5.99 

Barbarian II.£6.99 

Batman The Movie.£399 

Battlehawks 1942 . £9.99 

Blood Money.£399 

Blues Brothers. £9.99 

Cabal. £6.99 

California Games.£6.99 

Carrier Command.£8.99 

CeHca GT4 Rally . £6.99 

Centrefold Squares.£399 

Chase HQ . £6.99 

Cloud Kinadom.£399 

Colossus Chess.£6.99 

Combo Racer.£399 

Conflict in Europe.£7.99 

Deluxe Strip Poker (not A600) £6.99 

Double Dragon I or II.£6.99 

Dragon Ninja .£6.99 

Duel.£399 

Face Off - Ice Hockey.£7.99 

Fantasy World Dizzy.£5.99 

FI6 Combat Pilot.£7.99 

Flight of the Intruder.£399 

F.O.F.T. £6.99 

Future Wars.£399 

Gauntlet II . £399 

Ghostbusters II.£6.99 

Ghouls'n'Ghosts. £6.99 

Hardball.£8.99 

Head over Heels.£6.99 


Hudson Hawk...£6.99 

IK+.£6.99 

Indy Last Crusade Graphic ..£9.99 

James Pond .£399 

Jet Set Willy.£7.99 

J.Khan Squash.£6.99 

Last Ninja II .£399 

Last Nin a III.£7.99 

Lombard RAC Rally .£6.99 

Lotus Esprit.£6.99 

Lotus Turbo II...£8.99 

Maniac Mansions ..£399 

Manic Miner .£7.99 

Man United Europe.£7.99 

M. Jackson Moonwalker .£6.99 

Midwinter.£9.99 

Mig 29 Fulcrum.£9.99 

Moonshine Racers.£6.99 

Murder .£7.99 

Narc.£6.99 

New Zealand Story.£6.99 

Ninja Remix .£7.99 

North & South.£6.99 

Out Run .£6.99 

Operation Harrier .£7.99 

Operation Stealth .£9.99 

Operation Thunderbolt. £6.99 

Operation Wolf.£6.99 

Outrun Europa . £7.99 

Pang.£6.99 

Panza Kick Boxing . £399 

Pinball Magic .£7.99 

Pirates.£8.99 

Pitfighter.£6.99 

Predator.:.£6.99 

Prince of Persia .£399 


Project X .£9.99 

Pro Tennis Tour.£6.99 

Puzznic .£399 

Rainbow Islands.£6.99 

Ram bo III.£6.99 

RBI2 Baseball.£399 

Resolution 101 .£6.99 

Rick Dangerous II.£7.99 

Robocop.£399 

Robocop II.£399 

R-Type.£6.99 

Run The Gauntlet.£6.99 

R.V.F. Honda.£6.99 

Shadowiands .£399 

Shadow of the Beast.£399 

Shadow Warrior.£399 

Sherman M4.£6.99 

Shinobi.£6.99 

Simpsons.£399 

Smash TV.£6.99 

Speedball II .£7.99 

Starglider II.£6.99 

Strike Fleet.£9.99 

Stunt Car Racer.£399 

Supaplex .£5.99 

Super Cars II .£8.99 

Super Hang On.£399 

Switch Blade.£6.99 

Switch Blade II.£399 

Swiv.£399 

Terminator II.£6.99 

Titus the Fox .£9.99 

Turrican II.£7.99 

Untouchables.£399 

Vigilante.£399 

WC Leaderboard.£6.99 

World Championship Boxing £6.99 
Zak McKracken.£8.99 


Please make cheques and P.O.'s payable to Eagle Software. P&P is £1.00 per item in the UK. 
Europe: add £3.50 per item. Elsewhere add £5.50 per item. New titles will be sent as released and 
are subject to manufacturers price reviews. E.&O.E. # Please quote special offer when ordering 
for it to apply. 

Computer_ AMIGA _ 

Title 


500 

*Not released at time of going to press 


Name: 

Address: 


Date 

Price 

Price_ 



Postcode: 

Tel: 

Price_ 

Card No: 


Price 

_ Exp Date _ 

Signature: 

P&P _ 

_ Account No: 

(Please quote when reordering) 

Total_ 

— Access Q 

Visa n Cheque j - | P.O's f - 1 

















































































































































































































































































































































































































































































T his month’s disc is a multi- 
media banquet of video clips, 
playable demos of the hot¬ 
test entertaining and informa¬ 
tive CD games, eye-opening editorial 
in full colour moving video, great PD 
games, gleaming computer art and 
scorching music. 



Even though the amount of stuff on 
this month’s disc is bigger than 
Gondwanaland, finding your way 
around is as easy as riding a trike 
down a hill thanks to the simple inter¬ 
face: with colour pictures, sound and 
pop-up help at every stage. 


Pemo Games 

When the coverCD boots, the screen 
will go black for several seconds, then 
a screen selection of demo games will 
come up with instructions on how to 
start them. These demo games were 
so huge that they wouldn’t fit into the 
main section of the CD, so they have 
a special screen to themselves. As it 
says, wait for the screen to disappear 
and the buzzer to go and then press 
the red button to play the red-bordered 
game - Body Blows, the yellow button 
for the yellow-bordered game and so 
on, or the black ‘video play’ button to 
for Heimdall. In case you miss them 
when they appear: 

Fire and Ice: Green button 
Banshee: Yellow button 
Body Blows: Red button 
MicroCosm: Blue button 
Heimdall: black video play button 


If you don’t press a button 
within five seconds the CD automati¬ 
cally moves on to the editorial section 
and into the main menu. 


Main Menu 


On the main menu are six buttons, 
each clearly illustrated with a large 
picture, no need even to read. 



“What's on the menu " 


Video 



"Fabulous video" 

Press here to see any of three video 
clips featuring the amazing Ashley 
Cotter-Cairns as well as two less illus¬ 
trious up and coming celebrities, Clint 


This is it- the third and most 
brilliant multimedia Amiga CD 
coverdisc ever, giving your 
CP32 the chance to stretch 
itself. And for all those CPTV 
and A57Q owners who have 
been left out in the 
wilderness, an end to all the 
weeping and wailing and 
gnashing of teeth: this disc 
has been specially designed 
for vou too! Another Amiga 
CP first! Michael Rumbelow 


leads vou through the goodies. 


Eastwood and Jacques Van Damme, 
In their latest video releases. To play a 
film trailer select it and press the spe¬ 
cial ‘Play video’ button (the black rub¬ 
ber one left of the red button). CD32 
owners without an FMV cartridge for 
playing videoCDs may not have used 
this button much yet, but with FMV 
prices slipping and a host of new 
videoCD releases and other multime¬ 
dia video applications on their way it 
should soon become familiar. Warn¬ 
ing: to avoid eyestrain and possible 
damage to your monitor it may be 
advisable to turn down the brightness 
and colour controls when viewing 
Ashley’s shirt. 



“Unique AmigaCD Editorial” 


Games Review 

In this section the Amiga CD special 
games review force try out three of the 
latest CD32 games releases: Dispos¬ 
able Hero, Fury of the Furries and 
Labyrinth of Time. Again use the black 
video play button to view the clips. 
Includes live footage of very experi¬ 
enced but still fresh Amiga games 
experts, the ‘thirsty threesome’ Ashley, 
David and Sajid said playing the games 


and full screen footage of liv< 
gameplay. You’ll have to reset at trt 
very end of Ashley’s game score. (Th< 
computer doesn’t like his shirt). 


PD Games 



“More PD than will fit onto one screen" 


The 9 PD games are spread over tw< 
screens: move between the two b 
pressing on the on-screen arrow but 
ton. To play a game simply move to th< 
one you want and press the fire buttoi 
to start. The only exception is Klondyke 
which works best with a mouse: onci 
you have chosen the on-screen Klon 
dyke button, you then need to click th< 
left mouse button to start. If you don 
have a mouse you can still play with thi 
joypad, but you have temporarily plui 
the joypad into the mouse socket on thi 
CD32 and press fire to start, then plui 
it back into the first socket to play thi 
game. To exit the games reset the ma 
chine. 

Here is the full PD game selection: 
Bob’s Garden - Similar to the oh 


12 


AUI • JULY 1994 



























































































































Amiga CDI No.f 


- Biganim : animation spooler 

- Rend : animation builder 

- Two wonderful Amiga User Interna¬ 
tional Superdisks for those who missed 
No.34 and 36. 


we haven’t managed to squeeze on 
any CDTV video clips. Technical 
pobs! Watch this space though - 
perhaps in the next edition. 


CD32: General Help 



“What does what on the controller” 


The Amiga CD is designed around 
the intuitive, move and choose inter¬ 
face now common in multimedia. You 
move the highlight around the on¬ 
screen buttons with the directional 


joypad and choose the one you want 
by pressing the red ‘fire’ button. This 
is all you really need to know to use 
the Coverdisc, apart from the fact 
that to play the video clips, you have 
to use the black ‘video play’ button. 
Any other exceptional instructions 
are all detailed on-screen as and 
when you need them. The only other 
common controls are the blue but¬ 
ton, which normally cancels what¬ 
ever is going on - though be aware it 
sometimes takes a few seconds here 
in. (You can even get rid of those 
amazing delightful(?) voice overs!) 
and the yellow button, which brings 
up a helpful diagram of what is what 
on the joypad. 


arcade game Mr. Do. Dig around col¬ 
lecting apples and shoot anything that 
tries to stop you. A perennial garden¬ 
er’s favourite. 

Depth Charge - Blow up submarines. 
Descender - Shoot abstract shapes. 
Digger - Dig around shooting any¬ 
thing which tries to stop you. Consid¬ 
ered a close contender with Bob’s 
Garden as the best PD game on the 
disc in gardening circles. 

Klondyke - Card game with pictures 
of sexy ladies on the cards. Not PC, 
but PD. 

Tetris Pro - A supercharged version 
of the old Russian brain-twister. 
Deluxe Galaga - Superb Galaxians 
clone. 

PB Switch - Australian tactical puzzle 
game. 

Xmas time - Christmas theme plat¬ 
form game. Not many shopping months 
left now. 

_ Credits _ 

In this section you can find out just 
exactly who was responsible for this 
trail-blazing innovation in multi media 
magazine publishing. Private phone 
numbers for complaints may be sup¬ 
plied on the next CD. 



“Labyrinth: quite scary. Play it with the 
light on.” 


Yet more demo games: here we have 
managed to fit a couple into the main 
section of the CD. Fully playable demo 
versions of Donk! and Labyrinth, two 
of the best games out for the CD32. 
The other five on-screen buttons are 
reminders of the demo games avail¬ 
able at the start of the disc. 

_ Gallery _ 

Here is a conoisseurs’ collection of 
Amiga-generated art. From weird space 
scenes to weird abstract 3-D blobby 
shapes and back to weird space scenes 
again, take a trip around the virtual 
universe of the Amiga’s graphics. 



“The finest Amiga art” 

_ Music _ 

Exclusively featured in this month’s 
Amiga CD is the latest track from 
SuperCirqus. Best loud. 

Techy Corner 

For those CD32 users with a peculiar 
penchant for white coats, disshevelled 
hairstyles and constructing fully func¬ 
tioning home-made time machines in 
their spare time, we have included a 
special Techy corner. So that standard 
video games players don’t have to worry 
their pretty little heads about program¬ 
ming we have put this part in a hidden 
section accessible only with a special 
code. Press the green button, then the 
blue button, then the red button then the 
yellow button to arrive in techy corner. 

The main point of techy corner 
is to enable computer users to load 
software off the CD onto hard disk or 
into RAM of another Amiga to use for 
their own purposes. To make the most 
of it you will need as a minimum: an¬ 
other Amiga, an adaptor socket to plug 
into the CD32’s serial port, a null-mo¬ 
dem cable and some kind of Comms 
program like TwinExpress. There 
should be a more comprehensive techy 
facility on the next CD, some of the 
programs like Access on this month’s 
edition are a little wobbly and tend to 
crash, but for those who wish to have a 
taste of what’s available, here are the 
instructions for seeing what software 
delights are included: 

- Click on the TwinExpress icon 

- Click ‘Cancel’ on the System request 

- Bring the Shell to the front 

- Type “cd cdO: cd_project/utilities/ 
twinexpress” then return 

- Type “twin” then return 

- You can then access the cd directory 
and see what is on the disc with the 
‘dir’ command, ‘help commands’ gives 
a list of commands. 

Here is a selection of what soft¬ 
ware is tucked away on AmigaCD 3: 

- fastjpeg: simple graphics file viewer- 
jpegs : the original jpeg files used in 
the disc’s gallery section 

- PARNET : PD networking software 


CDTV & A5TO 
Special 
Instructions 

The CDTV version does differ in some 
aspects to the CD32 one, for instance 


Boot-up and 
Labyrinth 

While booting there will be a black 
screen, followed by a buzzer. 

Press ‘1 ’ at this point to run the huge and 
frighteningly playable demo of Labyrinth. 



Turn to next page for our amazing 
Comet Discount Voucher Offer 


JULY 1994 • AUI 


13 






























































(7^d 


Magazine 

No. 3 


continued 


Swap 
& Wlnt 



No. 3 


The world’s fii 
interactive C 
magazine for i 
Amiga 


7 Great Game Demos .. 9 Full Games .. Live Video 
. * .. 1A Game Reviews .. Amazing Graphiscs .. Pop Music . 

nationwide and take Film Trailers and More! 

The Real Amiga Multimedia Experience! 

Now with CDTV and A570 Compatibility Too! 

-{COMPACT 


your Amiga CD! 
Magazine disc into it. 


Main Menu 

The main menu displays the five sec¬ 
tions available on the CDTV version of 
the CD; Labyrinth, Art Gallery, PD 
Games, Music and Credits. Move 
around with the directional controller 
buttons (in joystick mode) and choose 
by pressing the ‘A’ selector button. All 
these are the same as on the above 
CD32 version exceptforthe PD games. 

RP Games 

The five PD games included are Cliff 
hanger, Descender, PB Switch, Tetris 
and Galaga. Galaga will probably not 
run direct from the CD: follow these 
instructions if you want to run it and 
have a floppy drive with a Workbench 
disk. 

- Boot from floppy 

- Go to CLI 

- Type “assign CDPD: CDO:” then return 

- Type “execute CDO:CD_PD_games/ 
deluxe_galaga/galaga.bat” then re¬ 
turn- That should do the trick 

AmigaCD! No-4 

In fact there was so much stuff to fit on 
this month’s disc that it wouldn’t even 
squash into the 600 Megabytes of a 
CD, so there are some additional good¬ 
ies not mentioned above we have had 
to hold over until AmigaCD No.4. There 
looks like being even more stunning 
colour video, game demos, deeptechy 
corner and other ground-breaking multi 
media magazine features. Inter-ac¬ 
tion packed! 


CDTV: 

General Help 

On the CDTV the directional but¬ 
tons on the controller move the 
highlight from one on-screen but¬ 
ton to another and the ‘A’ button 
selects the highlighted one. Use 
the joy/mouse button to change to 
mouse control where necessary. 
On some screens there is a set of 
buttons at the bottom of the screen, 
each of which corresponds to the 
box in the equivalent part of the 
screen above. For instance the top- 
left button shows the picture indi¬ 
cated in the top-left box in the Art 
gallery section. In most sections 
you can move around the on-screen 
buttons with all the directional but¬ 
tons on the controller, though with 
some movement is linear: just left 
and right directional buttons. The 
‘B’ deselect button is the equivalent 
of the blue ‘cancel’ button on the 
^CD32. _^ 


Okay, so you are drooling over the 
hottest bit of technodream stuff you 
ever held in your eager palms. Yes, 
you have a CD - a multimedia CD 
and you can slip it into your Amiga 
CD 32 and zoom off to Cloud Nine. 
Don’t bother to read on. 

Or maybe you 
don’t- 

Maybe like most Amiga users you 
don’t have an Amiga CD 32 yet. So 
what are you going to do with your 
CD? Well, AUI has for years been 
giving you a SuperDisk full of the 
cream of the Amiga utilities. And 
there are two this month too. 
Superdisk 40 can be yours too. 
Where is it? We hear you cry. You 
got a CD on the cover of AUI, didn’t 
you? And you got Superdisk 39, the 
amazing AUI utilities disk. But 
SuperDisk 40 which has, as you will 
see from the instructions on page 
15, eleven, yes, eleven more pro¬ 
grams packed on to it. Shame! 

But fear not, SuperDisk 40 
can be yours too if you want it. All you 
have to do is go down to the nearest 
Comet store and there are over 200 


There, Comet’s evercharm- 
ing assistants will give you a 
free, personal demonstration of 
what’s on the disc and what the 
Amiga CD 32 can do. And they will 
give you, in return for your CD, a 
genuine AUI SuperDisk No.40. 

Now do you want a free, per¬ 
sonal demonstration of the latest 
and some say greatest piece of tech¬ 
nology ever produced for the Amiga 
world? Oh yes, you do. 



In your local Comet, there is is an 
Amiga CD 32 waiting for you! 


Because there are three 
Amiga CD! Magazine discs which 
are not quite like the others. The 
prizes? What do you expect from an 
CD magazine - Amiga CD 32s. 

You can claim your prize ei¬ 
ther by getting the confirmation from 
a Comet GamesMaster Zone store 
manager that your disc is a winner 
or by sending the disc to AUI- regis¬ 
tered post - addressing it to Amiga 


© AMIGA CD! MAGAZINE 

1994 

CD! Competition Disc No.3. So you 
have the chance not just to get an 
AUI SuperDisk No.40, but also an 
Amiga CD 32 console as a prize. And 
once the secret difference is con¬ 
firmed, a spanking new Amiga CD 32 
will be winging its way to you. 

So if you don’t have an Amiga 
CD 32, make sure you go along to 
your local CometGamesMasterZone 
store and see if you have the magic 
disc that lets you win one. Now we 
know that there are no Comet stores 
in Ireland. So, if you live there all you 
have to do is send us the CD or call 
081 3028383 for your nearest dealer 
who will, we’re sure, be delighted to 
give you a demonstration of the 
Amiga CD 32 and a SuperDisk 40. 
The worst that can happen is you will 
get a free AUI SuperDisk No. 40 
worth around £15. You couldn’t get a 
better offer than that. You’ve got noth¬ 
ing to lose, have you? 


Button Controls 

Red: 

Selection/Pause 

Picture 

Blue: 

Cancel Selection/ 

Return to Main Menu 

Green: 

Help 

Cursor: 

Highlight Option 


W k 


TAKE THE VOUCHER TO YOUR 
LOCAL 


GAMESMASTER ZONE 


If (it any time your disc 
hangs, clashes ci fails 
to work in any way, 
open the lid of the CliCi? 
and check the disc for 
dust and ensure that it 
is correctly and firmly 
liositioncd. ‘then restart 
without using the licsM 
button 


DISCOUNT VOUCHER 

25% off 

CD 32 SOFTWARE! 

This voucher entitles any Amiga User International Magazine 
reader to a discount of 25% off the recommended 
retail price of Amiga CD 32 software. 

Take this voucher in to any Comet Games Master Zone 
for your 25% discount 

If you do not wish to cut up your magazine take this 
issue of AUI to the Comet GamesMaster Zone of your 
choice and show the assistant the voucher. 


Reason Code A9 

Valid until July 15 1994 


14 


AUI • JULY 1994 





























Ul Superdisk No.40 


W f elcometoSuperDisk40, 
yet another disk packed 
with over a megabyte of 
software. We have decided 
o put the very best utilities and games 
hat have previously been on AUI 
^overdisks. They have even been re- 
)laced with the latest versions where 
jossible. The famous Lha archiver 
las been used to crunch all the data 
)nto just one floppy. It’s dead easy to 
jn-crunch because we’re using Com- 
nodore’s Installer to do the dirty work 
or you! 

To get going, just follow our 
nstructions: 

Boot up your machine with 
/Vorkbench or the SuperDisk. Double 
:lickon the SuperDisk Install icon and 
vait for the installer program to load. 

When it’s loaded just click on 
he “Proceed” button. As the message 
jays, you are about to start the 
jnarchiving procedure, so click on 
Proceed” again to get underway. 

Now select Hard or Floppy Disk 
is your destination device and click on 
Proceed”. Note, if you want to 
jnarchive to the RAM disk click on 
Proceed anyway since the RAM disk 
:an be selected later in the procedure 
and is in fact the default directory). 


i«a 


it 11 tty. 

Installation Ontion 

< Install for Real 
) Prat and to Instal 


toy all acti 


_> Lo? 
“ Noi 


Hbort Install 


The installer utility is totally idiot proof. 

(We hope!) 

You should see a scrollable 
ist of the archived programs on the 
SuperDisk. Click on the up/down ar- 
ows or scroll bar to scroll the list. Click 
)nce on the file that you wish to 
jnarchive and click on “Proceed” again. 

The install program will now 
isk you where the file should be 
jnarchived to. The default is RAM, but 
jse the “Show Drives” gadget to select 
i different drive and directory. “Make 


The Best Of AUI VOL 1 
Compiled bv Gideon Overhead 

Fast JPEG VI.lO 


New Drawer” will let you create a new 
drawer, if you haven’t guessed! 

Click on “Proceed” and installer 
will show you the exact command it is 
about to execute. If it all looks good (if 
you’re interested that is), click on... 
that’s right, “Proceed”. 

The disk will then chunk into 
action as the file is unarchived. When 
it’s finished, you’ll have the option to 
continue unarchiving the other pro¬ 
grams (by going through the selection 
process again) or finishing the 
unarchiving procedure. If you choose 
the latter, the final task is to decide 
whether or not to install any libraries. 

If you select “Yes”, the installer 
will show a list of all the library files 
available on the SuperDisk. Click on a 
particular library to remove its ‘tick’ 
thus indicating that the library file will 
not be copied. Select a destination for 
the libraries (probably your Workbench 
Libs: directory) and click on proceed, 
the libraries will now be copied. 

If you intend to use this month’s 
programs from your hard drive or your 
own Workbench disk, you need not 
copy any of the libraries except for 
reqtools.library and arp.library - if you 
haven’t already got it. 

Programs 

There are 11 archives on the disk this 
month. Most, if not all, of the archives 
have a README (or .doc) file which 
has been set up to use “more” if you 
double click on the icon. This will give 
you much more information about the 
program and its use, so always read 
this file if you intend to use the pro¬ 
gram. 

These files look for “more” in 
the c: directory which is on the 
SuperDisk. Alternatively you can load 
the documentations files into mostword 
processors. 


Libraries 


This particular aspect of AmigasDOS can be a little confusing, especially for 
beginners. You don’t need to know how libraries work, but you should know 
what to do with them! 

We generally provide the libraries that are required by the programs 
on the SuperDisk, and these can be copied to the libs: directory of your 
Workbench disk (or other bootable disk) if required. 

Remember that the computer will always look for the LIBS directory 
on the disk that you booted up with, so if there is a problem with a program 
needing a library ensure that the library is present in the directory. Finally, 
Workbench 3 has a number of new libraries which can’t be used with 
Workbench 1.3, so don’t try using them with the old OS. 

If in doubt, read the program documentation, since programmers 
usually put this information into their readme files. 


This excellent JPEG viewer is the fast¬ 
est we have come across. This latest 
version (1.10) has a requestor for quick 
and easy file selection. There are two 
versions of the program. One for AGA 
Amigas and one for non-AGA Amigas. 
We have included a wonderfully ren¬ 
dered picture to for you to try it out with. 

Imploder 

Imploder is my favourite executable 
file cruncher. It is professionally writ¬ 
ten and very easy to use. There is 
even some excellent music which plays 
as you crunch! 


EMijC'Mifc 4.■' 


EsjauIiMh Fite r SD!tyth : J : J { jr V4.D 

Deacjn S: Proyrumfruny 

Ptitr 'Ji/ujj]'. & Alban J. 

.to Paul 'joti bar M 
Cr-jpriica B VJhlv/btl 

fiiteaih.ty 1:31 h rtr.!rS‘. 


■/IrJ/X 


■j'jst 


Imploder, a brillant file cruncher. 

GiegerT etris 

This version is possibly closest to the 
original Tetris, bar the music. Instead 
of the original Russian melody there is 
a nice classical sounding piece. 


DiskSalv2 

Every Amiga owner needs a disk sal¬ 
vaging program and one of the best is 
DiskSalv. It was written by Dave Haynie 
of Commodore so you know it was 
created by someone who knows what 
he is talking about! WB 2+ only 


BigAnim 

This is a neat little CLI program which 
is used if you have an animation that is 
too big to load into RAM. It loads some 
into RAM, and while playing it, loads 
some more in, keeping the animation 
reasonably smooth. 


M egaWorm 

A classic arcade game in which you con¬ 
trol a worm which gets longer every time 
it eats. Try and survive long enough to 
progress to the next level, and have fun. 

Memclear 

MemClear is a CLI program which 
clears your unused memory chunks 


Archives 

Here is an at-a-glance list of all the 
archives on the disk: 

BigAnim.lha 
Disksalv2.lha 
GiegerTetris.lha 
Imploder.lha 
MegaWorm.lha 
MemClear.lha 
QuickGrab.lha 
SYSinfo.lha 
ToolsDaemon21 a.lha 
J/VBVerlauf.lha _^ 

with zeros After clearing, it prints the 
amount of cleared bytes in CHIP and 
FAST Memory, and the total amount 
of free bytes. 

QuickGrab 

This useful program allows you to grab 
pictures of most workbench based 
programs just by hitting a combination 
of keys. WB 2+ only 


QuickGrab VI .1 


Save Directory |RRf1: 


M 


Base Filename |QuickGrab 


= 1*1 


Grab Hotkey |controt lcommand s j 
Delay before grabbing (seconds) [B | 
Show message when grabbing? I 


J 


QuickGrab, an easy to use screen grabber. 

SYSinfo V3,23 

This program tells you all about your 
Amiga, from how fast the processor is 
to what system libraries you have in¬ 
stalled. 

ToolsDaemon 
_ V2.1a _ 

If you have ever wanted to add to your 
Workbench menus now is yourchance. 
Nico Francois’ excellent Tools Dae¬ 
mon works a treat and is simple to use. 
WB 2+ only 

WBVerlauf V2,Q 

Fool people into thinking your moni¬ 
tor’s colour gun is failing! No, seri¬ 
ously, this program creates smooth 
colour washes over your Workbench 
screen. WB 3+ only. 

WBVerlauf.iff, 
creates lovely 
AGA colour 
washes on 
your WB. 



This is really the cream of PD. An 
outstanding selection that any self-re¬ 
specting Amiga user will love to own. 
Enjoy! The Best of the Best of AlZ/Vol.l 


JULY 1994 • AUI 


15 




















































































AUI News Rle 



Moving Up the Scala 
Double Speed 


Page 17 


The Microkernal Approach 
Smart Siren 
Pentium Based PCs 
Ole 

Quote of the Month 
Factoid 


Page 18 


Scala moves up into the big time. 


Moving Up the Scala 


Net So Good 
Don’t Get Sniffy 

Beam Me Up A Lawyer, Scottie! 
Seriously Amiga 
Syquest Extends Warranty 
Soaring Software Sales 
PC World Woos Women 



Does Voice Mail Really Work? 


Hama A-Cuts It 
Breathing Heavily At 166mps 
Versatile Monitor 
Digital VCR Standards 
Quote of the Month 


Page 20 


Hello, Darling, Goodbye 
CBM Press Pack 
Robotics Sportster 
Datel’s Digitiser 

The World’s Largest? Not Just Yet. . 
Guides For Idiots? 
Microsoft Up Too 
Factoid 



Magic Cap Fits Minitel 
IBM & Cyrix versus Intel 
Dirty Work 

Computer Graphis Expo 
Watch Out, Swerve 
Star Cuts 


Necrophilia Is Not Recommended 
Holy Amiga 



CeBit Record 


Prisma Gets A Word In First 
One For The Greenies 
Monitors Spaced Out 
Slipping Through The Net? 
Not Just Any Old Key 
No Such Thing As A Quiet Flight 
Online First 

TV Series Based On The Book 
Based On .. . Who? 

Doing MPs Justis 
Whistle While You Work 
PCMCIA Revved Up 

Compiled and edited by 
Anthony Mael and Martin Witton 


S cala, the company that has done 
more for presenation on the Amiga 
than anyone else is getting the re¬ 
wards of its efforts. Not only is Scala 
used by almost everyone creating a 
professional presentation on the Amiga 
and its close relative, InfoChannel used 
by virtually every cable TV station, but 
now the Norwegian company founded 
by Jon Bohmer has signed a deal in 
the USA that should bring a very big 
smile to all Scala people’s beaming 
faces. 

General Instrument have 
licenced the Scala technology and with 
Scala will develop it even more so that 
it can be used to enable home satellite 
TV viewers to navigate simply and 
quickly through the multiplying num¬ 
bers of broadcast channels and ac¬ 
cess services using an interactive pro¬ 
gram guide. 

The companies have set a a 
joint venture called Primestar which is 
going to deliver what is claimed to be 
the world’s first digitally compressed 
TV service direct to the home via sat¬ 
ellite. 

General Instrument will em¬ 
bed Scala’s multimedia software in a 
custom microprocessor that will sup¬ 
port mulitple interactive programming 
guides (IPG - a new acronym!). And 


they are going to put an IPG into all 
Gl’s satellite TVs. 

“Using an IPG, viewers can 
browse through both current and fu¬ 
ture programming by date, by channel 
or by category,” said Rick Segil, VP of 
satellite systems at Gl. “And addition¬ 
ally they can order their choices in 
much the same way viewers order 
movies from pay per view providers.” 

Gl is also going to use Scala’s 
authoring system to allow progamming 
services to produce and update cus¬ 
tomised user interface screens with 
text services, preview clips and two 
way communication. 

“This summer Primestar will 
expand to over 70 channels and later 
to over 150 channels.” Gary Traver, 
Gl’s VP Systems told AUI. And it 
seems that Gl is already using Scala 
to create visuals to go with its new 
digital audio channels and to create a 
wide range of downloadable screen 
material. 

Scala told AUI that they have 
sold more than 45,000 copies of the 
their program which must make it one 
of the big Amiga successes. But this 
deal with world leading electronics 
company General Instruments really 
takes it up into the big league. Will the 
Amiga go with it? 


DOUBLE 

SPEED 

S ony has brought out a new 
double-speed CD-ROM 
drive specifically designed for 
Multimedia and Photo-CD 
Multisession support. 

They told AUI that the 
CDU33A meets industry 
standard Multimedia PC Level 
2 (MPC2) specifications which 
allows users to take advantage 
of multimedia opportunities. 
The sustained data transfer 
rate has been doubled to 300 
KBytes/sec by rotating the die 
at twice the speed of 
conventional drives. 

It’s clear that we are 
going to see more and more of 
these CD-ROM drives coming 
out but you have to have a PC 
to run them. Wouldn’t it be 
simpler just to get an Amiga 
CD 32? Or are we the only ones 
Jn the secret? 



SCALA 


16 


AUI • JULY 1994 


























































AUI News F\le 


THE 

MICROKERNAL 

APPROACH 


A pple is due to unveil a strategy to 
{open up the Macintosh architec¬ 
ture. A three year roadmap sets out 
how Apple intends to bring to market 
a microkernal version of the Macintosh 
operating system to extend the 
Macintosh environment beyond the 
traditional Motorola base. The 
microkernal approach isolates the 
core of the operating system from 
machine-specific ancillary services, 
increasing both portability and 
scalability. 

By mid 1996, say Apple, the 
PowerPC user interface is expected 
to have intelligent agents, built in 
speech recognition and text-to- 
speech capability.The first example 
of “a home grown microkernal” is 
expected by late 1995 or early 1996. 
Code named Gershwin and intended 
for the desktop and PowerOpen 
servers, this will, it is claimed, include 



Double the speed but will Sony grab the real 
thing? 


Contact: Sony Computer 
Peripherals & Components UK, 
The Heights, Brooklands, 
Weybridge KT13 OXW. 

Tel: 0932 816000. (Not for the CD 
32 though...Unless it's Sony who 
buy out Commodore...) 


multithreading, multitasking, Open 
DOC 2.0 and 3-D modelling. 

Now what’s all this got to do 
with the price of Commodore fish...or 
rather Amigas? 

Well, what we think it means - 
though “home grown microkernal” 
sound a bit like gardening - is that 
computing even at the desktop level 
is going modular, you’ll be able to fit 
new modules of the operating system 
and even of applications into the new 
machines. 

Now if the runours are correct 
- and we’re not talking about of CBM’s 
imminent death but of the next gen¬ 
eration of Amigas containing the 
PowerPC chip from Motorola, there 
is no reason why this approach should 
be confined to Macs but could also be 
applied to Amigas. Now wouldn’t you 
like to have all those juicy promised 
goodies like voice recognition and 
simply plug them in and away you go. 
We certainly would. 

Olei 

N o, it’s not the call of the aficion¬ 
ados at the bullfight in Pamplona. 
It’s the latest acronym for a piece of 
computer jargon. It means Object 
Linking and Embedding which is the 
latest buzzword in the programming 
environment. First Amiga - Spanish 
for girl firiend and now OLE. Is it 
going to be Viva Espana! Or Paella 
next? 


Factoid 

Bill Gates, Microsoft’s 
billionaire boss, spends 2 hours 
a day reading and writing 
EMAIL. If you want to contact 
him to tell him how 
overwhelmed you are by 
MSDOS or that Windows is only 
now doing what the Amiga did 
years ago or any other useful 
comment of a similar nature, his 
identification tag is Billg. 



SMART SIREN 

S iren Software have told A (//that they are now supplying the Best Data ‘Smart 
One’ range of modems. 

All modems include RS232 cable, UK power supply, Ncomm 
communication software, full instructions, getting started guide and a two year 
warranty. 

The Smart One 1442FX operates at speeds from 1200 to 14,400 bps and 
can send and receive faxes at 14,400bps. It’s designed, Siren tell us, for 
beginners and experts alike and is priced at £199.99 (inc. VAT). With the growing 
interest in Internet etc as described in this issue of AUI, we all might be buying 
modems soon so Siren might be a good supplier to keep note of. 

Contact: Siren Software, Wilto House, Bury Road, Radcliffe, Manchester 
M26 9UR. Tel: 061 724 7572. 


PENTIUM BASED PCs 


B y the end of this year, 25% of PCs 
sold will be Pentium-based, ac¬ 
cording to Intel, who have announced 
their intention to push their latest chip 
into mainstream desktop and home mar¬ 
kets. 

Intel has announced three new 
chips: 90 and 100MHz Pentiums, dubbed 
P54C, and the 100MHz iDX4 - a 486 from 
which Intel has dropped the 486 tag. 

Before the end of the year, 
Pentium-based PCs will hit the ‘magic 
price point’ of $2000, said Steve Poole, 
Intel’s European VP, as the company 
cuts the price of the top end chip to shoe¬ 
horn it into the mainstream PC market. 

The transition from top end proc¬ 
essors mainstream will take 12 months 
or less for the Pentium which was intro¬ 
duced in the last quarter of 1993, said 
Poole. The 386 took five years to reach 


$2000 systems and the 486 took 
four.lntel has invested $5billion in the 
development, production and promo¬ 
tion of Pentium. 6 billion? Wow thsat’s a 
lot of money even to see “intellnside” all 
over the place. 

It’s spending $150 million of that 
in advertising telling us all about what’s 
inside too. As each generation of proc¬ 
essor costs them more, they say, so that 
have to get bigger and bigger sales 
volumes to get back their investment. 

The next generation called the 
P6 is said to be going to cost Intel a 
mere $12 billion, and the P7 $20billion. 

‘At each stage we bet the farm 
on it, but that’s always the way it has 
been’, said Poole. 

The farm? What sort of busi¬ 
ness is Intel in? And are the trees on that 
farm the kind that money grows on? 


QUOTE OF THE MONTH 

" It’s a sound plan as long as people realise those delivery 
schedules are probably set in Jell-O,” said Jenny Ceurvels, market 
analyst with BIS Strategic Decisions. 

What she means is that any software or hardware delivery date can 
slip through your fingers like jelly. And don’t we know it! 

It’s another illustration of the very true saying that no major 
software project - and it could also be hardware - has EVER been 
finished on schedule and on budget. 


JULY 1994 • AUI 


17 





























AUI News File 


Net So Good 

A man has appeared in court charged 
i with sending President Clinton an 
Email message threatening to kill him. 

James Reincke wrote to the 
President suggesting that he should 
not continue with his present plans 
and asked him how he would feel 
about being the first President to be 
killed on the same day as his wife. 

Meanwhile in Massachusetts 
a man was accused of using a 
computer bulletin board to advertise 
for ‘a friend’ to help him kidnap and 
molest a young boy. Is this a new slant 
on computer crime? And see the 
Internet article in this AUI on page 88 
for what happiness is for some beastly 
‘Netters. (Or ‘Nutters!) 


Don’t Get 
Sniffy 



hkinett 


SERIOUS 

WITH THE AMIGA 


Fours A CUPART 




If you play games, forget it.. 

SERIOUSLY AMIGA 

A maKEY Design have produced three books “for Amiga owners wanting 
^ to use the machine for more than just playing games.” Are there such 
people. Whoever heard of Amiga owners who use it for something else? 


Y ou may have thought that IBM had 
enough on its hands in getting out 
of the hole it had stumbled into through 
believing that the bonanza it once 
earned from selling mainframes would 
go on for ever. But after losing literally 
billions it still apparently has time for a 
little light relief. 

In one of its many laboratories, 
some bright Big Blue spark has come 
up with, and we kid you not, a computer 
that can small. Or at least distinguish 
between smells. (And none of that old 
joke about I smell but that computer 
stinks.) 


The three titles are part of a series called ‘Get Serious With Your 
Amiga’ and have been written by Larry “JAM” Hickmott. 

The first three books off the presses are Fonts & Clip Art, Word 
Processors and Buying an Amiga. Each of the titles will cost £9.95, many of 
them promised with a companion disk. 

Contact: AmaKEY Design, 13 Gairloch Ave., B letch ley MK2 3DH. 

Tel: 0908 370230. 


SYQUEST EXTENDS 
WARRANTY 


Soaring 

SOFTWARE 

SALES 

C entreGold, the US Gold group 
which recently went public and 
made its founder Geof Brown a mil¬ 
lionaire, has been coing in the the 
cash. 

Turnoverfrom its software pub¬ 
lishing business, US Gold etc, in¬ 
creased by 81 % to £26.2m. Cartridge 
sales more than doubled to £19.2m 
with the launch of CentreGold’s first 
Nintendo product and the growth of its 
US business. 

New product launches, higher 
US sales and the growing popularity 
of personal computer software in 
CD-Rom helped CentreGold resist the 
price wars and turn in a 24% increase 
in its interim pretax profits. 

And it all started with would-be 
rock musician Geof Brown persuading 
rather sniffy US games companies 
that the UK did really exist as a games 
market - and what better name to give 
the company that made its name im¬ 
porting American products than US 
Gold? 

They do say in Birmingham 
that everything Mr Brown touches 
turns to gold...except that Testarozza 
which was red and kept breaking 
down.. 


What will they use this marvel 
for? Who knows? Maybe to tell the 
difference between one flower and 
another, one sexy perfume and 
another.. And what would be the effect 
on it of a guy we once knew who swore 
that he pulled the girls with no trouble 
at all because he’d read that if you rub 
your - used - underpants under your 
chin, when you get close to a girl she 
just melts. Would IBM’s new electronic 
stinker just fall apart - or about? 


BEAM ME UP A 
LAWYER, SCOTTIE! 

I t is being rumoured that Paramount 
Studios - the movie company recently 
bought for a mere £6 billion, have 
demanded the removal of all Star Trek 
games, graphics and sound files from 
CompuServe and other US networks. 

They’ve apparently given the 
networks some time (a few light years?) 
to clean up the galaxied act but are 
threatening action in future. (On which 
planet?) 



Five Years Hard labour... 


S yQuestTechnology has increased 
the warranty on all 105MB 3.5" 
removable hard disk cartridges from 
one year to five years. The warranty 
will also apply to the 3.5" 270MB 
cartridges associated with SyQuest’s 
new SQ3270 drive. 

SyQuest claim that their drives 
are popular because they are faster 
and less expensive than magneto- 
opticals and ideal for applications that 
require high performance storage 
solutions. They say they are reliable, 
easily transportable and a cost effective 
solution when more storage is needed. 
The 270MB drive has over twice the 
capacity of 128MB magneto-opticals. 



THE COMPUTER SUPERSTORE 


PC WORLD 
WOOS WOMEN 

P C World, the computer superstore, are under the impression that 
Northampton women are unique. This extraordinary revelation is based 
on the dubious analysis of data collected when the company advertised for 
suitable candidates to work at the latest store. Was this startling revelation 
based on the calibre of the applicants? No. Their claim that Northampton 
women lead the way is based on the fact that the recruitment campaign 
attracted a record number of female applicants. 

Good lord, did they really think that women were too dumb for 
computers? Or is it that PC use affects the brain of males and all they can do 
is sit around staring out of Windows? 


18 


AUI • JULY 1994 


































































DOES VOICE MAIL 
REALLY WORK? 


C homerics Europe recently in¬ 
stalled the British designed and 
built Voice Connect system, to 
consolidate their French, German and 
British sales operations into one central 
unit in Marlow. 

The Voice Connect system, 
they say, enables the sales teams, 
independent sales agents and 
customers to remain in contact with 
technical, sales and service staff, by 
instantly providing a contact in the 
callers own language from a single 
source. 

Messages can be dealt with 
quickly by multilingual experts. The 
Voice Connector is plugged into an 


existing telephone system and 
automatically answers 24 hours a day 
and with a human voice, callers on the 
system, providing both internal and 
external messaging services. Callers 
can immediately route themselves to 
the person they need simply by dialling 
their extension number. 

Voice Connector can also 
announce the name of the caller to the 
extension user and will also record 
internal or external callers messages if 
someone is engaged or not available 
and deliver those messages auto¬ 
matically to any telephone worldwide. 

More and more companie we 
call seem to be using voice mail which 



Hama's new genlock adds to the range. 

HAMA A-Cuts It 

H ama has launched the new A-Cut for Amigas. It was first shown at the 
CEBIT exhibition in Hannover in March, and Hama says it’s the latest 
edition to the range of editors for computer controlled editing. A-Cut 
complements the range of their Amiga genlocks. A prototype controlled vision 
mixer was also on show. 

Hama have a second series of Videosound CDs which, they told AUI, 
will offer users top quality music and effects tracks for adding to video 
soundtracks without infringement of copyright. The subjects covered include 
Holidays, Travel, People, Recreation, Atmosphere and special effects. 

Contact: Hama PVAC Ltd, Unit 4, Cherrywood, Chineham Business 
Park, Basingstoke, Hants RG24 OWF Tel: 0256 708110 


Breathing heavily at 
166MPS 


A quote - not of the month - but from 
i an Intel advertisment: 

“Power to deliver 166 million 
instructions per second. The Pentium 
processor will breathe new life into 
your current spreadsheet packages 


and integrated software suites.” 

Now 166 mps is quite a little 
bit on the nippy side but even at that 
speed we doubt whether it can 
“breathe new life” into a speadsheet 
program. 


is really only a complex version of the 
answer phone. 

Don’t think you in your not so 
humble home won’t get around to using 
one in the not so distant future. When 
answer phones started to become 
popluar in the early seventies, you could 
hardly buy one but had to - expen¬ 
sively - hire one. And companies made 
a mint from the rent. They were valued 
at hundreds of pounds - then! Now 
they are down to a few pounds and we 
are beginning to see more and more 
companies using them. The first that 
we know of was GVP but Commodore 
in the UK have voice mail and no doubt 
in the USA in these last days CBM’s 
West Chester head-quarters has found 
it very useful indeed. Voice Mail - it 
means never having to say you’re 
sorry - at least not in person. 
Contact: Voice Connect Ltd. 12, Fir 
Tree Lane Industrial Estate, Groby, 
Leics. LE6 OFH. Tel: 0533 322422. 


VERSATILE 

MONITOR 

T he Auto-Scan 1438 is said to be a 
versatile 14" monitor from Mic- 
rovitec suited to a wide range of 
applications from business to 
consumer. Designed and built in the 
UK, Microvitec told AUI “the monitor 
includes features such as frugal power 
consumption, anti-glare screen, tilt and 
swivel and MPR II compliance.” MPR 
compliance? Oh really? 

The 1438 can autoscan across 
a wide range of frequencies to provide 
users with the flexibility to run 
applications at both VGA and higher 
frequencies, while still allowing the 
use of software that needs lower 
frequency compatibility, such as 
games. 

Contact: Microvitec PLC., Bolling 
Road, Bradford BD4 7TU. 


DIGITAL VCR 

STANDARDS 

A n agreement has been reached by 
k the world’s leading consumer 
electronics companies on technical 
standards for the next generation of 
digital VCRs. 

50 members of the the HD 
Digital VCR Conference reached an 
agreement for high definition digital 
VCRs which use the binary digits of 
computer language rather than ana¬ 
logue signals to record images and 
sounds. Digital VCRs will, it is claimed, 
give greatly improved picture quality 
and make for cleaner tape copies. 

The machines will use tapes 
about two thirds the size of a conven¬ 
tional VHS cassette with four and a 
half recording time, and are expected 
to be in the shops by early next year. 
They are expected to be expensive 
with some estimates putting the cost 
of a machine at up to £2,055. 

Nowthatall soundsjustwhizzo, 
doesn’t it? A nice bit of techonews. But 
do they really think that the VCR - 
especially at that price - is going to 
compete with the cheap and increas¬ 
ingly cheerful CD? Doesn’t it seem a bit 
late - even for the no doubt digitally 
marvellous - VCR to make its mark? 
Particularly with all this video-on-demnd 
that going to be downloadedable. 




Nice looking and frugal with the power... 


QUOTE OF THE MONTH 

“As for the threat of multimedia PCs dominating the market... Techni¬ 
cally it is possible that the family will gather round the PC to watch a 
movie or play a game. But it won’t happen. It’s a different business”. 

Simon Turner - Philips Director of Interactive Media 
And he’s right too. Philips CD-I may not be the bees knees but it - and 
of course the Amiga CD 32 - are miles ahead of the PCs in what we 
might call “living room appeal”. The venerable Editor of AUI - and 
please make sure that’s spelt “venerable’ and not “venereal” or that’s 
the end of us! - said much the same thing an issue or two ago. 
Though doubtless millions of PCs will penetrate the SoHo - small 
office/home office - market, there is no way that any sensible home 
entertainment loving person is going to have one cluttering up the 
living room and you can believe that no matter what Bill Gates or any 
other supposed guru of the computing world tells you. There is maybe 
not in technical terms but certainly in appearance a difference between 
a computer and a living room entertainment machine; a point that 
rightly but unsuccessfully Commodore tried to get over with the CDTV. 


JULY 1994 * AUI 


19 
































HELLO DARLING 
AND GOODBYE 


N ow there was a time when two 
darling young brothers, still in their 
late teens, prodigies at their art of 
coding started their own company with 
the expressed intention of not paying 
out all that silly money that was 
demanded for licences to movie titles 
and the like for computer games. And 
they did it it too. They created loads of 
games which if cheap - 8 bit at £2.99 - 
and not too terribly complicated were 
at least original. 

So many games did they sell 
that both brothers became rich and 
when they fought off one of the big 
bullying console companies over 
whether a device they’d invented called 
Game Genie could be legally used, 
they even became famous. 

So they drove around the 


Oxfordshire countryside in their 
Porsches still the good side of 25 
years of age making the games world 
Dizzy with their cleverness. 

But all good things have to 
come to an end and probably the only 
games company that by choice had 
never bought a licence seems to have 
caved in to the nasty commercial world. 
For who should the new Wimbledon 
winner and world number one, Pete 
Sampras’ Tennis be by? Well, what a 
surprise, Codemasters. So the Darling 
brothers have gone down the trail of 
licences, no doubt crying all the way to 
the bank. 

Ah, it’s a sad computing - or do 
we mean corrupting? - world out there 
- even seen through the windsceen of 
a Porsche, don’t you agree, darling? 


COMMODORE 
PRESS PACK ERROR 

A press release distributed in the Commodore Press packs at ECTS, we 
aretold, inadvertently described the MC68040 processor as the Motorola 
68LC040. But equally we have been informed that “The Amiga 4000 Tower 
derives its power from the MC68040 processor which is substantially 
more powerful than the processor cited in the original release.” Now that 
would be nice to know if anyone could get hold of these almost mythical 
A4000Ts. We know lots of people including none other than Barry 
McCarthy himself who would be delighted to shell out real momey to buy 
one but according to our US sources no more than 300 A4000TS have ever 
been produced and most of those seem to have been sold, believe it or 
not, in Canada from whence some the Towers were bootlegged across 
the border the USA. It’s like Prohibition days, isn’t it? Psst! Want to buy 
an expensive Amiga? Yes, please. And we have one! 


DATEL’S DIGITISER 


D atel have a colour digitiser that 
they claim is a“full realtime digitiser 
at a realistic price.” The digitiser is 500 
and 500plus compatible and it can grab 
colour images in 1 /50th of a second. Its 
double buffered display is said to re¬ 
fresh the screen at 5 frames per sec¬ 
ond. You can, Datel say, save IFF files 
from 15 bit data -15? That’s an unusual 


number! It has among its editing fea¬ 
tures cut, paste, brush, copy and lots 
more. Palette controls inlcude TG B and 
gamma. The cost? Just £99.99. Yes, 
you get that vital penny change. 
Contact: Datel Electronics, Govan 
Road, Fenton Industrial Estate, 
Fenton, Stoke-on-Trent ST4 2RS 
Tel: 0782 744292 


ROBOTICS SPORTSTER 

U S Robotics have said they intend to bring modems to the mass 
market by reducing the Sportster 14.400 under the £200 price barrier. 
The fax/modem has been given a list price of £199.00, but may be seen in 
some retail outlets for as little as £150.00 to compete, say US Robotics, 
with “grey imported non B ABT approved kit”. The 14,400 is the company’s 
best selling product. They also have a Sportster 2,400 priced £99.00. 

The Sportster 14,400 has been packaged to sell straight from the 
shelves. “People have to be in the market for a sale, but the customer 
should be able to decide whether they want it from reading the box”, said 
MD Clive Hudson. The Sportster 14,400 comes with fax and data software 
from Smith Micro. 

Decide on a modem from the box? Oh really? 


GUIDES FOR IDIOTS? 


T he news team assume that the 
letter addressed to OBE (Our be¬ 
loved Editor) which starts “Dear 
Anthony (sic) Jacobson, The Idiot’s 
Guide To...” wasn’t meant personally! 
Juliet Thompson from MacMillan Lon¬ 
don goes on to suggest that the books 
would make “ideal giveaways or com¬ 
petition prizes”. What for AUI readers? 
We’re not idiots, we hear you cry. 

So how would you feel about 
being presented with an Idiots Guide? 
However, whereas one might take 


exception to being thought an idiot, 
one could picture someone in a mac 
slipping into a backstreet boksellerto 
obtain a copy, suitably wrapped in 
brown paper (or the Observer!) and 
reading, late at night, under the cov¬ 
ers, while one’s partner is sleeping, 
these very useful tomes. 

The Idiot’s Guides to: Word- 
perfect, Windows, DOS and Lotus may 
be just what you have been looking for 
to unravel the mysteries - all for £2.99 
each. 


MICROSOFT 

UP TOO 


The World’s 
Largest? 

Not Just yet.. 

C ompaq’s expressed goal of 
becomming the world’s largest 
PC manufacturer by 1996 may have 
come a step closer, they claimed, when 
they announced a doubling of their 
profits for the first quarter of the year. 
The profits they made from lowering 
the price of their PCs but keeping up 
the quality increased by 108% to $213 
million - about £120 million on sales up 
41% to $2.3 billion. That’s a nice little 
£1.4 billion or thereabouts. It’s still 
quite probably quite a bit behind IBM 
but Compaq is the only one of the top 
six PC manufacturers who made 
money last year so you never know 
what could happen by 1996... 


M icrosoft who are into software 
rather than hardware are no 
slouches when it comes to raking in 
the cash too. They have reported 
record turnover, up to 30% to $1.24 
billion - a mere £800million or so, for 
the third quarter, even after a £80 
million law suit charge over the Stac 
Electronics patent infringement case. 

They got sued for using Stac 
technology and had to pay up a little 
matter of £80 million or so. Excluding 


that amoumt, income would have been 
up 38%. Sales of their Windows and 
Office products have been particularly 
strong, said Mike Brown, Microsoft VP 
of finance. For the nine month period 
turnover was up by 24 per cent to 
$3.36 billion, - around £2 billion and 
profits up 14% to $784 million. Now 
making £500 million profit in just nine 
months is big money in anybody’s 
language even Microsoft’s bespecta¬ 
cled boss, Bill(call me on Email) Gates. 


Not only do they offer VFM but 
come with a unique holder which at¬ 
taches the guide to the side of the 
computer. The author Seth Godin was 
brand manager at Spinnaker Software 
for several years. He also published 
videos on how to use computer pro¬ 
grams and taught introduction to com- 
puterscience atTufts University, USA. 
They may have been idiots there, Seth, 
but you are targetting the wrong audi¬ 
ence here at AUI. Readers of AUI are 
not, we repeat - possibly like PC users 
- idiots! 


FACTOID 

The electronics games market 
is the fastest growing and now 
the biggest sector of the 
European toys and games 
market, up 89% between 1988 
and 1992. Yes, toys and games... 


20 


AUI • JULY 1994 














T>TTT A 1 

IM 

CAU/l 

ITT 

OK1AJ 

IN 

rUWI 

L//HI 


Commodore 



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A1200 




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d 39 


Microcosm 
& The 

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A Chip Set, 16.8 Million 
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ur,, AoO v ' 4 oV'V^ 'll 3E Ha^v ' 

^ ^ -ision v 








'I [ 

a* 1 


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o® . Gall for compatib * 4 °~e! 

n** v° I IK manhinoc nnt "nrm 


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/ 


COMPUTER 
GRAPHICS EXPO 


MAGIC CAP 
FITS MINITEL 

F rance Telecom has taken shares 
in the General Magic alliance giv¬ 
ing it access to the Magic Cap operat¬ 
ing system and the Telescript commu¬ 
nications language. The company 
plans to putthetechnology in its Minitel 
interactive data network. “Telescript” 
we are told “is an object-oriented com¬ 
munications language that allows the 
user to create software agents that go 
out into the network gathering infor¬ 
mation and services requested.” Oh 
really? Who are these agents that go 
wandering about the system and worse 
still we don’t know to whom they re¬ 
port. Are KGB or MI5 or eveb CIA? 

Magic Cap is claimed to be “a 
combined operating system and user 
interface.” Oh really? 

“The deal will enable France 
Telecom to offer a more sophisticated 
service improving the user interface 
for users to create intelligent agents 
that can interrogate the network.” 

What and how the agents are 
starting interrogation! We don’t much 
like the sound of this. It’s beginning to 
feel menacing. 

But fear not help may be at 
hand from Maigret or Hercule Poirot or 
even the Surete, anyone who speaks 
French in fact. For what Magic Cap’s 
agents may not know is that Minitel, the 
French equivalent of Videotext (or 
Prestel), with whom they have joined 
forces is the very largely used for sexual 
purposes. 

Yes, all the fears of the hysteri¬ 
cal MPs etc in the UK about what the 
networks can be used for is borne out 
on Minitel where ooh la la! the goings 
on are reputed to be tres tres wild. 
Perhaps Magic Cap could change its 
name to Dutch cap? 

IBM & CYRIX 
versus INTEL 

I BM is taking on the might of Intel - 
see the enormous profits in the ear¬ 
lier item - following a new five-year 
licencing agreement with x86 chip de¬ 
signer Cyrix. This follows IBM’s giving 
up rights to produce Intel’s Pentium 
processors. Pentiums (Should it be 
Pentia?) use BiCMOS manufacturing 
technology but IBM is committed to the 
simpler CMOS process for its advanced 
processor design. The new arrange¬ 
ment with Cyrix, one of Intel’s bitter 
rivals, also entitles IBM to produce as 
many processors for its own use as it 
makes for Cyrix and use them for itself 
or even to sell them on the market. 

Intel won’t be too pleased at 
this ganging up against them but no 
doubt with the amount of cash they’re 
making at the moment they won’t be 
too worried - yet. 


T he organisers of Computer 
Graphics Expo which takes 
place at Wembley on 8-10 Novem¬ 
ber have announced the establish¬ 
ment of a Computer Games Devel¬ 
opment Centrethere. This, they say, 
will be both an educational forum 
and a place where developers can 
meet games publishers. 

The Expo, they say, em¬ 
braces the creative and potential 
for computer graphics technology 
in fast growing areas such as mul¬ 


timedia and virtual reality. 

Complementing the exhib¬ 
its and application areas is a series 
of associated events such as The 
London Film Effects and Animation 
Festival (The LEAF awards), The 
Computer Artand Design Showand 
a multi-stream Computer Graphics 
conference series. 

Contact: Gerry Murray, Computer 
Graphics Expo. 10 Barley Mow 
Passage, Chiswick, London 
W4 4PH. Tel: 081 995 3632. 


NECROPHILIA IS NOT 
RECOMMENDED 


A sex education computer disk 
which provides young people with 
information on more than 150 topics 
from blow jobs, babies and bestiality to 
safer sex, sodomy and sado-maso¬ 
chism - no, dear not all at the same 
time, it will tire you out - could soon be 
available in secondary schools (un¬ 
less Education Minister John Patten 
gets there first!) 

An A-Z of Love and Sex has 
been devised by a former probation 
officer who claims it offers a balanced 
approach on sensitive issues.(Such 
as the advice that necrophilia is not 
recommended?). 

Graphics are included to illus¬ 
trate various sexual matters (with 
sound effects?) such as ‘vasectomy’ 
which, it is rumoured, comes(wrong 
word that!) complete with a dotted line 
and label saying ‘cut here’. (Ms Bobbitt 
is not included in the list of contribu¬ 
tors!) 

The disk, to be tried out in a 
selection of schools, follows the row 
over the Health Education publication 
- Your Pocket Guide to Sex which was 
banned by Dr. Mawhinney, the Health 
Minister. Pocket Guide? That’s where 
boys keep their hands to play games 
after they give up consoles, isn’t it? 

holy 

AMIGA 

W hat all you believers have been 
waiting for..Christian Clip Art has 
arrived for the Amiga. The collection 
comprises 45 themed disks of clip art 
selected by a minister for use in Bible 
studies, Sunday schools and Church 
magazines. Which is where unques¬ 
tionably most of you spend your time 
with your Amigas. While many of the 
pictures are said to be specifically 
designed to illustrate Bible events and 
Church life, the compilation also in¬ 
cludes drawings of a more general 
nature. 

Themes range from Old Tes¬ 
tament archaeology to environmental 
issues, church history to editorial flair, 
illuminated letters to harvest festival. 
The collection also includes 450 Annie 
Valletton drawings as used in the Good 
News Bible. 

Well, you sinners here’s your 
chance to turn over a new disk. 

Contact: Christian Clip Art for the 
Amiga, 55 Bouldrewood Road, 
South Benfleet, Essex SS7 5UA. 
Tel: 0268 795555. 


DIRTY 

Work 

R esearch by DE Montfort University - is that all they have to do at 
private universies? - has revealed that dirty and greasy computer 
screens can distort displayed text and graphics and lead to eyestrain. 
Oh really? 

The research commissioned by Sapona, was carried out in three 
office environments - an accountants, a local authority - well we know 
what dirty deeds go on there don’t we? - and a garage. 

A recent EC directive on VDU use has warned that screen gazing 
for long periods can lead to mistakes, eyestrain, headaches and general 
fatigue. A screen clouded with static, fingerprints, grease and dust will 
make this worse. 

A further problem uncovered by the researchers is that VDU 
users tend to increase the monitor’s brightness levels to compensate 
for a dirty screen. Well, of course, they would wouldn’t they? This can 
also cause eyestrain. 

Following the research, the university produced a five point 
checklist for users to prevent eyestrain. Sapona have produced a range 
of specialised cleaning kits! Well, they would too, wouldn’t they? 


Watch Out for 
the Swerve 

S werve Video are bringing out a 4 disk pack of AGA multimedia backgrounds 
and pre-defined palettes for use in your own productions. They’re free of 
copyright, they cost just £4.75. 

Contact: Swerve Video, 99 Park lane, Wednesbury, West Midlands 
WS10 9P 


STAR CUTS 

S tar Micronics has announced “aggressive new prices” across its range of 
dot-matrix, laser and colour thermal printers. These include £149.00 (from 
£199.00) for the LC-100 at the bottom end to £379.00 for the SJ-144 thermal 
printer from £459.00. So if you would like an aggressively priced new printer... 

Contact: Star Micronics UK Ltd., Star House, Peregrine Business Park, 
Gomm Road, High Wycombe Bucks HP13 7DL. 


22 


AUI • JULY 1994 












CeBIT 

RECORD 

C eBIT ’94 in Hannover attracted a 
crowd of 675,000 visitors and 
5,850 exhibitors, breaking all records 
and confirming, the organisers view - 
and who is to say they are wrong? - 
that the show is the leading interna¬ 
tional IT exhibition. 

Almost half of the exhibitors 
were from overseas representing 53 
countries. The UK was the third larg¬ 
est group of foreign exhibitors with 232 
companies taking part. 


PRISMA GETS 
A WORD IN 
FIRST 

P risma Office has beaten Word¬ 
Perfect to the market with its Inter¬ 
active Voice Response System. This 
lets users access Prisma’s network 
calendar application via telephone 
without a computer. 

Using the telephone keypad, 
they can review OnTime appointments, 
have their Mail messages read to them 
and get calendar information sent to 
them by fax. WordPerfect has an¬ 
nounced a similar service - Telephone 
Access Server for its Office software, 
but it isn’t expected to ship until mid¬ 
year, while Prisma’s product is due 
now. It is based around a card made 
by Voxlink and the card and all neces¬ 
sary software will start at £9,250. And 
it’s due now? But when has any soft¬ 
ware come out on time even a pack¬ 
age costing the small sum of six grand? 
But at least for that price youcan shout 
at your computer and get a respectful 
answer. We don’t get that from our 
Amigas anymore. 


ONE FOR THE 
GREENIES 

T he Compass Classic-R Plus P, a 
new PC - with a silly name - uses 
CMOS VLSI chips to reduce standby 
consumption of less than 30 watts for 
all models - claimed to be less than a 
third of that for a standard PC. An 
automatic standby timer also works to 
save up to 80 per cent of normal run¬ 
ning costs according to Compass. The 
“green” computer is not a new idea but 
we could see a growing trend. You 
could always switch the damn thing off 
to save power instead of leaving it on all 
day and night as most people we know 
seem to do. 



MONITORS 
SPACED OUT 

F arnell Tandberg Data has launched a pair of monitors with space 
inside them for a PC - or even and Amiga if you have one on a board. 
The ErgoStation 15cPT is available in a variety of configurations. 

A PowerPC-based option may be made avilable in 15" and 17" 
models, conform to a variety of green standards. They do not require 
fans and are low radiation. 

A 486DX version with 4Mb of RAM and a 170Mb hard disk costs 
£1,499.00. It’s probably a good idea. After all apart from the keyboard 
you don’t need the bulk of the computer at all. So why not hide it away 
Jnside the monitor? Amiga monitor manufacturers please copy. J 


Slipping through 
the net? 



Here she is again, the girl of your nightmares. 


hile Americans can contact their 
president at the White House 
through Internet, the Government here 
have not offered such services to the 
public. 

As reported last month, the 
BBC has launched a prime time TV 
programme - The Net - and the BBC 
Networking Club is supposed to en¬ 
courage the public to join in. 

Britain’s visible presence on 
the Internet has been limited largely to 
the universities exchanging academic 
information with each other. Few Brit¬ 
ish companies are using it for anything 
but internal communications. So who 
is the audience that the BBC is hoping 
to get/ Well, we hear it’s you. 

Yes, the home computer user 
is thought to be getting into the Net¬ 
work mode and the BBC programm 
will deal with other matters than just 
networks. We just thought you’d like 
to know in case you take any time out 
from serious computing at your Amiga 
to stare at the Goggle Box. 


Not just 
any old key 

T he Wall Street Journal reports 
that Compaq is considering 
changing the instruction ‘Press any 
key’ to ‘Press return key’ after dim 
customers kept asking help line 
operators where the ‘any’ key is! 


Online 

First 

I f you wnat to know about such things 
as Workbench, ARexx and Amiga- 
Dos what should you do? Read AUI 
regularly of course. But you can also 
get more info about these and other 
useful, nay vital subjects from the 
Amiga Online Reference Manual ob¬ 
tainable from First Computer centre. 

The manual is a collection of 
AmigaGuide - and if you don’t know 
what that is see the article about it in 
this AUI - documents. Price £17.99 
Contact First Computer 
Tel: 0532 319444. 


J ustis Parliament a new CD-ROM 
/online service available from Con¬ 
text, will provide information on Parlia¬ 
mentary proceedings and publications 
from 1979 up to the present day. 

Included are indexed refer¬ 
ences to questions, official publica¬ 
tions, EC legislation and bill history 
records. The first archive CD-ROM 
covers 1979 to 1987, the second 
from 1987 to 1992. Each costs £250 


F or the past six months staff at 
Olivetti’s Cambridge research cen¬ 
tre have been followed around by their 
computers. When they are away from 
their desks, they whistle by pressing a 
button on an infra-red badge, and which¬ 
ever application they used last reap¬ 
pears on the nearest teleporting ma¬ 
chine fitted with an infra-red receiver. 

Now you are not believing this 
are you? But we assure you that April 
1st has passed and this is no hoax. 

The infra-red badges are already 
being sold for security applications lock¬ 
ing doors or blanking screens when 
badge wearing personnel are not around. 


NO SUCH 
THING AS A 
QUIET FLIGHT 

U nited Airlines has introduced busi¬ 
ness and “infotainment” centres at 
every seat. These will include digital 
phones and personal video systems. 
Delta, American and other airlines are 
expected to follow suit. No longer can 
you take a flight to give you some 
peace from the phone! 


TV series based on 
the book based on 
... Who? 

A new TV mini series is being planned 
l inthe USA that should have you 
all gripping you armchairs. Based on 
the book “Accidental Empires” it traces 
the short and inglorious history of per¬ 
sonal computing from the point when 
young Bill Gates drops out of college to 
become a computing billionaire. 

The riveting book includes 
details of his endearing habit of hold¬ 
ing up long queues in 7-Elevens while 
he searches his pockets for the 50 
cents off coupon on a tub of ice-cream. 
Can hardly wait! 


plus VAT. The annual subscription 
fee to Justis Parliament is £480.00 
plus VAT. 

Well, we were going to sug¬ 
gest that Amiga CD! readers once 
they had finished Microcosm and all 
the other demos and gone bonkers 
with Fury of the Furries should start 
buying CDs like this one. But at nearly 
£500 we’d recommend buying another 
two Amiga CD 32s instead. 


If you think we’re joking about 
this, we’re not sure but we don’t think 
we are. That’s funny he just left the 
room and his Amiga screen went blank... 

PCMCIA REVVED UP 

T he PCMCIA card specifica¬ 
tion has been beefed up with 
a 32-bit bus which will transfer 
data faster than the ISA bus. 

Other changes which will 
make the cards more attractive 
for desktop use include support 
for a reduced operating voltage. 



Doing MPs JUSTIS 


WHISTLE WHILE YOU WORK 


JULY 1994 * AUI 


23 




















AUI Test Drive 




I t’s white, well built and extremely 
good looking. Am I taking about 
me? No, not this time, but the new 
CD1200 from Commodore is 
everything to shout about. I remember 
getting excited about the A570 CD 
drive for the A500 and look what hap¬ 
pened to that. (Oh really? ED) 

According to sales figures and 
Gallup charts, CD32 is a success com¬ 
pared to the old CDTV system. Anyway, 
CD technology is BIG, and the many 
thousands of 1200 owners should soon 
have the chance to join in the fun. 

It’s been a difficult decision over 
the last year to choose between buying 
a CD32 and an A1200. After all, it’s tech¬ 
nically possible to upgrade either mach¬ 
ine to perform like the other. The trouble 
was knowing which machine would be 
able to be converted into the other first. 
As it happens the A1200 is first (officially) 
and the CD1200 turns the 1200 into a 
fully fledged CD32 - well, very almost. 

Interface Board 

You can place the CD1200 anywhere 
you like, it doesn’t have to be placed 


I At// • JULY 1994 


AJ.2QO owners 


are in for a big 


treat this 


summer! AUI 


has got hold of 


the official CP 


drive add-on 


for the AJ.2QO. 


and Gary 


Fenton used 


this as an 


excuse to niav 


CP32 games 


all dav! 


to be used - if it’s really technically 
possible that is. 


Wiring Up 


next to the 1200, as long as the 2 foot 
cable will reach(l). This cable connects 
the 1200 and the CD drive but before 
you can do that a new interface board 
must be installed inside the 1200. 

The interface board looks like 
any other expansion board for the 1200 
and even includes a SIMM socket for 
adding extra RAM. One of the chips on 
the interface is AKIKO which is the 
very same one you’ll find inside a CD32. 

AKIKO is the latest version of 
the Gary/Gail custom chip which addi¬ 
tionally provides hardware chunky to 
planar conversion. And so what? Well, 
this chip allows the CD32, and now any 
1200 with the CD1200 drive, to produce 
texture mapped graphics like those seen 
on many PC games. It’s no way as fast 
as a 486 PC doing chunky graphics, but 
it’ll do it faster than an 040 processor! 

When it comes to expanding 
further and adding an FMV video module 
then, I’m afraid, the similarities with the 
CD32 stop there. It doesn’t appear 
possible to add such an FMV module 
onto the CD1200 orthe internal interface 
board. This means that CD movies like 

The interface which fits underneath the trap door 
inside a 1200. Note the SIMM slot for extra RAM. 


Star Trek VI and The Naked Gun 
won’t be seen running on any 
CD1200’s this year. Maybe a 3rd party 
developer has plans to produce a new 
interface which allows the FMV module 


The back of the CD1200 has 6 sockets 
which seems a lot for a glorified CD 
player. The audio output from the 1200 
must be diverted to the CD1200 where 
it’s mixed with CD music and sound and 
then output using a pair of stereo phono 
sockets at the back. This is where you 
plug your TV or hi-fi into for sound. I very 
much recommend that anyone with a 
CD32 or CD1200 output link the sound 
to a hi-fi because the quality is fantastic, 
especially when these days a lot of 
games give you stereo sound effects 
and CD music at the same time! 

As I said earlier, the CD drive is 
connected to the 1200 via a short ca¬ 
ble, called the data cable. Don’t ask 
why, that’s quite obvious! The last ca¬ 
ble to protrude from the CD1200 is for 
the power supply. Oh no, not another 
stupid brick to lay slumbering by your 
feet. Yes, I’m afraid so, folks. The 1200 
simply doesn’t have enough juice to 




























































AUI Test Drive 



Yes, that's definitely an Akiko chip I see there! 


power the CD drive - and I’m not sur¬ 
prised with a pathetic 25 Watt PSU! 

If the thought of keeping every¬ 
one awake in your house at night with 
the sounds of Microcosm and Oscar is 
too much for you, then you can plug 
your headphones into the minijack 
socket provided. A volume control al¬ 
lows you to vary the volume according 
to your ear drum’s tolerance. 

Playing Games 

So, does the CD1200 play all of the 
games that are out there for the CD32? 
No. Just kidding - it sure does play 'em 
all, all those we tried worked fine. The 
only problem is that some games re¬ 
quire the multi-buttoned CD32 control¬ 
ler for special game functions. You can 
get by with just a regular joystick and I 
tried it and totally enjoyed playing Fire 
And Ice from Graftgold (highly recom¬ 
mended!) However, there are now 
joypads like the Gravis on the market 
that can be bought quite cheaply. 

Microcosm also worked a treat 
and I played thatforoooh, ten minutes! 
Its graphics are totally stunning and 
show what can really be done with 650 


megabytes of CD storage space. Ani¬ 
mation spooled off the CD drive as 
smoothly as eating a Galaxy chocolate 
bar, both being sexy if your girlfriend 
does it! Ahem! 

CP-ROIW 

Because the 1200 has a keyboard and 
possibly a hard drive, you can use the 
CD1200 as a CD-ROM giving you ac¬ 
cess to thousands of programs and 
tonnes of data, like the Fred Fish col¬ 
lection and all those PD compilations 
out there. It’ll also read PhotoCD pic¬ 
tures providing you have the right soft¬ 
ware. I have an EX module for Scala 
and a PD program which reads and 
displays PhotoCD pictures, and they 
are stunning to say the least! 

I Hear Music 

Chuck your favourite music CD into 
the CD1200 and party all night! Using 
the CD player program built into the 
CD1200’s ROM you have total control 
of the music tracks. Better than any 
normal CD player, you can skip tracks, 
fast forward, pause, do an intro scan, 
repeat, random play, program a play 



The data cable to the CD drive projects from the back of the A1200. Where else? 



Let's see what's inside the CD1200. Oh, it's a, erm, thing! I think I'll play Zoo! now. Where does this bit go? 


list, see how much of the track has 
been played and how much more to go 
in minutes and seconds, and the graph¬ 
ics are cool too! 

We were given a Workbench 
program which does the same thing 
and lets you play CDs while you 
multitask and get on with other things 
that you do on your 1200. I’m not 
absolutely sure if this Workbench pro¬ 
gram comes with the CD1200 but I’ll be 
surprised if it doesn’t. 

Conclusion 

This is the add-on that 1200 owners 
have been waiting what seems ages 
for and thankfully we know for sure that 
this item really exists! The audio quality 
is as good as any regular CD player, 
and arguably better than some of the 
chea-per ones on the market. The CD 
games out at the moment are fantastic 
and outshine the games on other plat¬ 
forms like CD-i and MegaCD. The 
CD1200 looks good too which I think is 
important and you’ll impress all your 
friends when you put the drive through 
its paces. 

Commodore can’t give a defi¬ 


nite price or even a launch date for the 
CD1200 at the time of writing. We can 
guess that it’ll be well under £200, 
perhaps as low as £149, because the 
full blown CD32 is only £250. And if the 
price is much higher then, of course, it 
would be more economic to buy the 
CD 32 itself! The CD 1200 could, we 
are told, even be on sale before the 
summer is out.. Keep an eye out for 
this little baby, it’s a real gem and 
certainly one of Commodore’s best 
ever add-ons! Which is a bit ironic with 
their situation as it is. But by the time 
that it’s available we hope that the 
crisis will have gone away and all the 
1200 owners will be rushing out to buy 
this great CD drive. AUI 


RATINGS 

CD A 1.200 


FEATURES 

90% 

PERFORMANCE 

95% 

VALUE FOR MONEY 

??? 

LOOKS 

95% 


Overall Rating 94% 



ON/OFF 


DATA IN 


AUDIO OUT AUDIO IN 


Stuff the cables into the back and you'll be ready for business in no time! 


JULY 1994 • AUI 


25 



































































AUI Test Drive 





Isn't she a beauty? 

S tanding half a metre tall with 
its high profile looks and the 
god-like Amiga badge, the 
A4000T is a mighty sight to 
behold. The mysteries lying beneath 
its steel exterior have long been anti¬ 
cipated and finally, with its arrival on 
UK shores, Al//have seized this oppor¬ 
tunity to bring you the review many 
have been waiting for. 

Sparing no time I whipped the 
casing off to find out what exactly is 
inside this beast. Unlikeany other Amiga 
I found the 4000T to be modular in 
design. There was an Audio Video 
module, a Disk module, an Input Output 
module, and a CPU module. At this 
stage I was so curious that I took these 
modules out for a closer inspection. 

Modular 

The CPU module is called the A3640 
which, I believe, is the very same one 


The Amiga world has been 
waiting a year for this 
machine to arrive, packed with 
similar hardware found in the 
desktop 4QOOs, plus extra 
bits, and some surprising 
modifications, Gary Fenton 
gets out his screwdriver ready 
to reveal the secrets of this 
new Amiga. 


this board can be replaced with other 
boards providing different outputs 
depending on the users needs. 

The Disk module gives the 
4000T a dedicated SCSI 2 interface 
and connections to floppy disk drives. 
An external SCSI 2 connector pokes 
out the back of the machine while a 
long ribbon cable wraps itself around 
the inside ready to be connected to 
various internal SCSI devices. 

We just happened to have a 
fast SCSI 2 drive lying around which I 
wired in to the tower. Using DiskSpeed 
4.1, the machine only obtained a 


The internal speaker near the base, just under the front fan. 


The front door swings open to reveal the power, 
reset and audio buttons, and the front drive bays. 

used in the current 4000/040. The 
CPU module can be removed and 
replaced with other modules when 
available, such as GVP’s 40mhz 040 
or UUL’s promised 060 board. The 
standard CPU inside the 4000T is a 
25Mhz 68040. One would have 
expected at least a 33Mhz one for the 
money. (I’m told that a 33Mhz 040 is 
not much more 
than £10 extra!) 
Sprouting off the 
motherboard and 
showing through 
the back of the 
machine is the 
Audio Video mod¬ 
ule. This provides 
a regular 15Khz 
RGB video out¬ 
put socket, a pair 
of phono sockets 
for audio, plus an 
additional head¬ 
phone socket in 
the shape of a 
minijack. Being 
modular, we are 
led to believe that 


One unusual thing we noted 
was that the very end of the SCSI cable 
was attached to the I nput Output module, 
presumably allowing even more SCSI 
devices (scanners?) to be plugged into 
the 4000T using an external port. 

The Input Output module is 
firmly fixed to the rear of the 4000T 
(morejike welded!) which connects to 
the motherboard via two ribbon cables 
and to the Disk module with another 
cable. It provides the usual serial, 
parallel, mouse and joystick ports 
which is common with all Amigas. 

Judging by the blanking plates 
covering holes at the back of the 
machine, and bearing in mind that this 
is a modular beast, I imagine that other 
boards will become available allowing 
more than one parallel and serial port. 
Considering most PCs have had two 
serial ports for many years, I’m a little 
vexed that the 4000T hasn’t two as 
standard. Oh well, I look forward to a 
new I/O module then! 

Spacious 

There’s so much room inside the 4000T 
thatyou could almost hang chandeliers 
inside which automatically go on when 
you remove the casing. Hmm, perhaps 
not, but you can certainly fit five internal 
5 1/4 inch drives. Three fit horizontally 
right at the top at the front while another 
two fit vertically in the middle. There is 
heaps more room (enough forafootball 
team?) right inside the centre of the 
machine but no mountings are provided. 

Even more room appears vac¬ 
ant above the internal power supply 
for a miniature nuclear reactor, but it 
shouldn’t be necessary. The PSU 
provides a meaty 250 watts of steam 
which is 100 watts more than the PSU 
of desktop 4000s. It has its own fan 
which blows air out while another fan 
mounted at the front sucks air in 


The back: Keyboard, external SCSI 2, Audio 
Video module output, and lots of blanking plates. 

maximum of 1.7 megabytes a second 
transfer. Something was wrong with 
my setup and it’s probably down to the 
dip switches found on the underneath 
my hard drive. Sadly we didn’t have eno¬ 
ugh time to spend getting it to work at 
full speed, but Commodore told us that 
they’ve obtained 3.5Mb a second using 
a Micropolis hard drive and 4.5Mb a 
second using a Maxtor drive. It makes 
a big difference when compared to 
normal SCSI drives which give about 
1Mb a second. 


The back: Power supply and Input Output module 
connecters. 


26 


AUI • JULY 1994 





















































































AUI Test Drive 



The Disk module: Floppy drive and SCSI connections. 


providing an essential and refreshing 
stream of cool air running through the 
tower. Deck-chairs and a brass band 
are extra if want to climb inside on hot 
days. 

RAM It Up! 

Four SIMM slots can be found below 
the Zorro slots near the top of the 
machine. SIMMs are industry stand¬ 
ard memory modules which can easily 
be installed and removed when need¬ 
ed. Desktop 4000s can only hold 4Mb 
SIMMs (up to 16Mb of fast RAM), 
while according to a jumper on the 
4000T’s motherboard, the tower can 
utilise 8Mb SIMMs. If this is true then 
it can be expanded to 32Mb using the 
provided slots. (The jumper actually 
says “SIMM Size” followed byal and 
2Mb setting and a 4 and 8Mb setting). 

Fresh Chip 


The custom chips which populate the 
tower are called Super Buster, Lisa, 
Alice, Paula, Ramsey, Gary, and 



The video, Zorro and PC slots. Top right; 
SIMM slots. 


Bridgette. I don’t know why Gary has 
been used because that chip died with 
the original chip set. It must be a typing 
error on the motherboard! Bridgette is 
a new chip exclusive to the 4000T and 
does something very clever, I’m sure, 
but I don’t know what! Commodore 
couldn’t provide me with that information 
before this issue went to press. Maybe 
it’s a Video Toaster chip? Not. 

Double Vision 

One, two video slots? No, let me count 
that again. One, two. Yes, this baby 
has actually got two video slots! You 
knowthe4000T means business now, 
what with virtually all 4000s sold in 



Inside the tower with the casing removed. 


America being used in the video 
industry, these two slots will come as 
a major benefit to those who live, work, 
and breathe video. 

Other slots include five Zorro 
III slots and four PC slots including a 
dedicated PC slot. There are eight 
guides and rear blanking plates for 
internal boards. Two of these are taken 
up by the Audio Video and Disk 
modules leaving space for six full size 
boards. 


What Else? 

The IDE controller built into the 
motherboard of 4000 desktops is also 
builtintothe4000T’s motherboard. You 
can plug up to two IDE drives into this 
interface, and don’t forget the seven 
drives that can be plugged into the 
SCSI interface! Powerhouse or what? 

Yet another interesting feature 
is the internal speaker. No, it doesn’t 
make “beep” sounds like a PC’s internal 
speaker, but instead delivers a 
whopping 0.25 watts of mono Amiga 
sound! It’s a good idea if you don’t 
have any external speakers of your 
own wired up to the tower. And if you 
don’t want any sound at all, press the 
audio disable button at the front of the 
4000T and a little light will go off and so 
too will the sound. 

Does this Amiga have AAA 
graphics, some people may ask. No, 
but it does have Workbench 3.1 
instead, not much of a consolation but 
it’s a another step nearer. There are 
no obvious differences to Workbench 
3.0, but because no manuals were 



The Input Output module, pictured from the 
inside the tower. 


supplied with our review model I am 
unable to find any moderate changes. 

Conclusion 

So is the 
4000T is dis¬ 
appointment 
or monument 
of Amiga tech¬ 
nology? Put it 
this way; it was 
no more than 
what I was 
expecting 
apart from the 
extra video 
slot and mod- 
ular bits. A 
33Mhz 040 
wouldn’t have 
gone amiss, 
but the tower 
looks a lot bet¬ 
ter when com¬ 
pared to Macs 
and PCs than 
the desktops 4000s did. It’s still a lot of 
money for a computer but you can’t 
complain when the only altern-ative is 
a Mac or PC! 

This machine is the flagship of 
Amiga computers and it actually looks 
very much the part! Powerful from the 
inside out, it’s not hard to realise the 
potential oozing from every crevice. I’ll 
end by echoing the cries I hear from 
around the Amiga community -1 WANT 
ONE! AUI 


RATINGS 


> 

£ 

0 

0 

0 

H 

FEATURES 

95% 

PERFORMANCE 

95% 

VALUE FOR MONEY 

89% 


Overall Rating 94% 


INFO 


| Price: Starts from around £1899 J 



The Audio Video module: RGB video, audio, and headphones. 



Behind the front panel. 


JULY 1994 * AUI 


27 
































































AUI Test Drive 



C reating animation on the 
Amiga is really a doddle. 
There’s plenty of software for 
drawing, rendering and ani¬ 
mating and, of course, there are pro¬ 
grams like DPaint which offer anima¬ 
tion editing features. But what about 
24 bit animations? There seems to be 
a lack of software in this area which is 
why I was particularly pleased when 
the honourable Ed handed me a copy 
of Magic Lantern, fresh from the sunny 
sands of California. 

After reading the exciting blurb 
on the back of the package I was 
expecting something like FRED (part 
of ADPro) where you can graphically 
see each frame of the animation. In¬ 
stead a dull and quite uninteresting 
screen appeared waiting for some 
human input. At this point I read the 50 
page manual which I found very in¬ 
forming and amusing in places. (Read 
the manual? That’s a little unusual for 
you , isn’t it? ED) 


_ Framed _ 

Now, fully enlightened, I can take a 
series of 24 bit frames and convert 
them into an animation file which will 
play back through Retina, Opalvision, 
Picasso, EGS, Spectrum, and GDA 
graphics cards. Naturally it will create 
Amiga animations too but the frames 
must be no more than 8 bitplanes 
deep. (Lantern won’t re-render images 
to different resolutions - use ADPro/ 
ImageFX for that). 

One of Lantern’s 
biggest selling points 
is the ability to add 
synchronised sound 
samples to animations. 


All the frames that make up an 
animation are listed on the right of 
Lantern’s screen and the other side 
lists the contents of a selected direc¬ 
tory, which should contain your 24 bit 
files. Simply click on the names of the 
frames (files) that you want to include 
in your animation and the names ap¬ 
pear in the animation list. You can 
select a whole range of frames in one 
go by typing in the first and last name 
of the sequence. A multi-select fea¬ 
ture (hold down shift key and click with 
mouse) would be a much faster method 


Gary Fenton test drives a bit 
of magical software for 
editing animations 
on the Amiga. 


instead. Maybe in the next version? 

The frames in the list can be 
rearranged, duplicated and cut very 
easily using the mouse to select a 
frame and then a button to perform the 
editing function. It’s a blind way of 
editing because you’re lost if you 
haven’t made a note of what each 
sequence of frames looks like. An 
option to preview a selected frame is a 
serious omission. 

Different Ideas 

Lantern uses its own animation file 
format called DIFF. The author ex¬ 
plains that he needed to create a new 
animation format because the Amiga’s 
ANIM format was hard wired for opti¬ 
mum playback on the Amiga, taking 
advantage of its custom chips. 



(say at 25 fps) then a “Synchro¬ 
nize” option will automatically 
drop frames during playback in 
order to keep the animation run¬ 
ning at the specified rate, and 
therefore any sound will stay in 
sync. Excellent! 

Once you’ve created your 
DIFF anim you can play it back 
from within Lantern or use the 
freely distributable DIFF players. 

One player spools the DIFF 
from the hard disk and another loads 
the DIFF into RAM before playing. 
DIFFs can also be taken back into 
Lantern for further editing. 

Conclusion 

Magic Lantern is a powerful tool which 
should be on the shopping list of any 
serious animator. Firstly, becuase if 
you own any of the 24 bit cards it 
supports, and because secondly if you 
need to add perfectly timed sound to 
animations. I’ve used Lantern for both 
Amiga (HAM8) and Opalvision 
animations and I’m very pleased with 
the results. Even if you buy it just for 
the sound, you can finally add the 
finishing touches (like sound effects) 
to your animations. This is what I’ve 
been waiting for! AUI 



A frame from the demo animation. 


RATING3 


Magic Lantern 


FEATURES 

70% 

PERFORMANCE 

92% 

EASE OF USE 

85% 

DOCUMENTATION 

85% 

VALUE FOR MONEY 

80% 

Overall Rating 

Sp 

CM 

00 

INFO 


Price: $95.00 
Contact: 

Terra Nova Development 
P0 Box 2202, Ventura 
California, 93002-2202 
Tel: 805 652 0531 


Playing an ANIM file on any¬ 
thing but an Amiga would be very slow 
indeed. However, DIFFsareoptimised 
to play back on any display device. 

Lantern offers five levels of 
compression ranging from Small (rea¬ 
sonable speed and small file size) to 
Raw (no compression - very fast but 
big file size). Alternatively, Lantern 
can choose the compression level 
automatically on a frame by frame 
basis. This option seems to work the 
best in most cases. Playback speeds 
are very good indeed, bearing in mind 
any hardware limitations. 

One of Lantern’s biggest sell¬ 
ing points is the ability to add synchro¬ 
nised sound samples to animations. 
Just include the name of the sound 
sample in the frame list and it’ll be 
played at exactly the right point in time 
- to the frame! 

Animations can be locked to 
play back at a specific rate. If your 
computer can’t quite keep up with it 



Now I can play back my 24 bit animations with sound effects! 


28 


AUI • JULY 1994 

















































































AMIGA TITLES 



....9.99 

Diggers (A1200). 

...22.99 

A320 Airbus European . 

...21.99 

Dinosaur Detective Agency 

...10.99 

A320 Approach Trainer. 

...19.99 

Dinoworlds . 

...19.99 

Airbucks 1-2 . 

...19.99 

Disposable Hero. 

...16.99 

Airbucks 1-2 (1200) . 

...22.99 

Donk. 

...16.99 


.. 16.99 

Dracula. 

...19.99 

Alien Breed Special Edition 

...10.99 

Dreamlands. 

...19.99 

Alfred Chicken (1200) 

16 99 

Dreamweb . 

...22.99 

Ambermoon. 

...19.99 

Dune 2. 

...19.99 


...16.99 

Flfmania . 

...16.99 

Arcade Pool . 

....6.99 

Euorpean Champions (A1200) 16.99 

Armour Geddon 2 . 

...15.99 

Excellent Games (Compilation)22.99 

Arsenal. 

...16.99 

Eye of the Beholder 2 (1 Meg) 21.99 

Bards Tale Trilogy . 

...22.99 

FI. 

...16.99 

Battles Isle 93 . 

...16.99 

F117A Knight Hawk . 

...22.99 

Battle of Time. 

...22.99 

F16 Strike Eagle 2 (1 meg) 

...13.99 


...16.99 

Fantastic Dizzy . 

...16.99 

Benefactor . 

...19.99 

Fantasy Empires. 

...22.99 

Blade of Destiny. 

...25.99 

Fatal Strokes . 

...19.99 

Bobs Bad Day. 

...16.99 

Fatman. 

...17.99 

Brian the Lion. 

...16.99 

Fire and Ice. 

..16.99 

Bubba 'N' Stix. 

...16.99 

Football Crazy . 

.9.99 

Bubble and Squeak . 

...16.99 

Forms Grand Prix . 

...16.99 

Burning Rubber . 

....16.99 

Formula 1 Grand Prix. 

...22.99 

Burning Rubber (1200). 

...16.99 

Formula One Champions ... 

...19.99 

Caesar Deluxe. 

...19.99 

Formula One Team Manager... 19.99 

Campaign 2. 

...22.99 

Front Page Football. 

...25.99 

Captive 2. 

...19.99 

G2. 

...16.99 

Cartoon Racer. 

...16.99 

Games Machine. 

...19.99 

Castles 2. 

...19.99 

Genesia . 

...19.99 

Castle 2 (1200) . 

...22.99 

Global Domination. 

...22.99 

Celtic Legends . 

...19.99 

Global Gladiators . 

...16.99 

Chuck Rock 2. 

...16.99 

Globdual . 

...19.99 

Civilisation (1200). 

...25.99 

Goblins 3. 

...22.99 

Civilisation (1 Meg). 

...22.99 

Goal . 

...13.99 

Combat Air Patrol . 

...19.99 

Gulp. 

...19.99 

Cool Spot. 

...19.99 

Gunship (XL) . 

.8.99 

Cosmic Spacehead. 

...16.99 

Hanna Barbera Animation... 

...29.99 

Creepers . 

...19.99 

Hannibal . 

...19.99 

Cyber Punks. 

...16.99 

Heroes Quest 2 Legacy. 

...16.99 

Cyberspace. 

...22.99 

Indianapolis 500 .. 

.8.99 

Dalek Attack 30th Anniversary 15.99 

Innocent . 

...22.99 

Darkmere. 

...19.99 

International Soccer . 

...16.99 

Deluxe Music Construction Set57.99 

Ishar 2. 

...19.99 

Dennis. 

...16.99 

Jack the Ripper . 

...27.99 

Dennis (1200). 

...17.99 

Jaguar XJ220 (1 Meg) . 

.9.99 

Dennis and Gnasher . 

...16.99 

James Pond 3. 

...19.99 

Desert Strike . 

...19.99 

James Pond 3 (1200) . 

...19.99 

Diggers. 

...19.99 

Jetstrike . 

...16.99 


TOP 50 CHART 


AMIGA TITLES 


A-Train .12.99 

Alien 3.16.99 

Alien Breed 2 .16.99 

Alien Breed 2 (1200).19.99 

Award Winners 2.19.99 

Body Blows .17.99 

Body Blows Galactic .17.99 

Body Blows Galactic (1200).19.99 

Brutal Sports Football .16.99 

Cannon Fodder .19.99 

Championship Manager 93 .16.99 

Championship Manager Italia .16.99 

Chaos Engine .16.99 

Chaos Engine (1200).16.99 

Combat Classics 2.19.99 

Dune 2.19.99 

European Champions.16.99 

Flashback.19.99 

Frontier (Elite 2).19.99 

Fury of Furries.19.99 

Graham Gooch 2nd Innings .11.99 

Graham Gooch World Cricket .19.99 

Gunship 2000.22.99 

Hired Guns .22.99 


BLANK DISKS 

20 ....£11.00 100 ..£30.00 
50 .....£20.00 250 ..£70.00 
PRICES ARE FOR UK 
MAINLAND ONLY 
PRICES INC P+P 

Frontier 
Elite 2 
£19.99 

Cannon 

Fodder 

£19.99 

T.F.X. 

£22.99 


Jurassic Park . 

.16.99 

Jurassic Park (1200). 

.18.99 

Micro Machines . 

.16.99 

Monkey Island 2. 

.24.99 

Mortal Kombat . 

.19.99 

Pinball Fantasies (1200) . 

.19.99 

Premier Manager 2 . 

.9.99 

Ryder Cup . 

.16.99 

Second Samurai. 

.19.99 

Sensible Soccer 92/93. 

.16.99 

Sim City Deluxe . 

.22.99 

Simpsons & World. 

.16.99 

Skid Marks . 

.16.99 

Soccer Kid (A1200) . 

.19.99 

Streetfighter 2 . 

.9.99 

Syndicate. 

.22.99 

Ten Intel Games. 

.19.99 

Terminator 2 Arcade . 

.19.99 

Theatre of Death. 

.19.99 

The Settlers. 

.19.99 

Tornado. 

.22.99 

Uridium 2. 

.16.99 

WWF2 Wrestling. 

.15.99 

Winter Olympics . 

.21.99 

Zool 2. 

.9.99 


K240 .17.99 

Kawasaki Team Green .16.99 

Kingdom of Germany.19.99 

Kingmaker .22.99 


Mortal 

Kombat 

£19.99 


Beneath 
Steel Sky 
£19.99 


DIRECT SPECIAL BARGAIN BOX 


Blues Brothers.7.99 

Curse of Enchanter.9.99 

D Generation (bundle).7.99 

Disc.4.99 

Federation of Free Traders....5.99 

Jimmy Whites (bundle).7.99 

Legends of Valour.9.99 

Lemmings 1.9.99 

Lemmings 2.12.99 

Manix.4.99 

Mega Lo Mania.9.99 


Nigel Mansell Grand Prix.9.99 

Premier Manager.7.99 

Premier Manager 2.9.99 

Quadrel.4.99 

Thunderstrike.4.99 

Titus the Fox.7.99 

Ultima V.9.99 

Warriors or Reylene.7.99 

Zool.7.99 

Zool 2.9.99 


Kings Quest 6 (1200) . 

.22.99 

Kit Vicious . 

.16.99 

Krusty Fun House . 

.16.99 

Lambourgini. 

.16.99 

Legacy of Sorasil . 

.16.99 

Lion Heart . 

.16.99 

Lords of Power . 

.22.99 

Lotus Trilogy . 

.19.99 

Maelstrom . 

.22.99 

Magic Boy . 

.16.99 

Magicians Castle . 

.19.99 

Man. United 


Premier Championship . 

.19.99 

Mario is Missing. 

.19.99 

Mean Arenas . 

.16.99 

Mico English (6-GCSE) . 

.19.99 

Microcosm . 

.19.99 

Monopoly. 

.18.99 

Morph (1200). 

.19.99 

Mr Nutz (1200) . 

.17.99 

Mr Nutz (600). 

.16.99 

Nick Faldos Golf. 

.18.99 

Nobby the Ardvark. 

.16.99 

One Step Beyond . 

.12.99 

Oscar . 

.16.99 

Oscar (A1200) . 

.16.99 

Overdrive. 

.16.99 

Overkill. 

.12.99 

PGA Tour Golf + Courses 

.18.99 

Paperboy 2. 

.6.99 

Pinball Dreams . 

.15.99 

Pinball Double Pack .... 

.22.99 

Populous 2 + Data Disk 

.19.99 

Populous/Sim City. 

.16.99 

Powerhits. 

.19.99 

Prehistorik2 . 

.16.99 


Primemover.17.99 

Puggsy.19.99 

Rally.16.99 

Rampart .15.99 

Realm of Darkness.16.99 

Rise of the Robots (A1200) ...27.99 

Rise of the Robots.27.99 

Roadrash. 19.99 


Rugby League.16. 

Ryder Cup (A1200).16. 

Sabre Team.15. 

Sea Air Rescue .22, 

Seek and Destroy .16. 

Seventh Sword of Mendor.16. 

Silent Service 2 (1 Meg) .22. 

Sim City /Lemmings .19. 

Sim City Terrain Editor.8. 

Simlife.22. 

Simon the Sorceror .22. 

Simon the Sorcerer (1200) ...25. 

Soccer Kid .16. 

Space Adventure.22. 

Space Hulk .22. 

Sports Top Ten .19. 

Star Trek 25th 

Anniversary (1200).22. 

Strike Squad .22. 

Super Hero .19. 

Super League Manager.16. 

T.F.X. (1200) .22, 

Tactical Manager (England) ...19. 

Tactical Manager (Italy).19. 

Tactical Manager (Scotland) ...19. 

Tensai .16. 

Terminator 2 .18. 

Total Carnage .18. 

Tracksuit Manager 94 .15. 

Traps and Treasures .19. 

Turrican 3 (A1200).16. 

Turrican 3 (A600) .16, 

Twilight 2000 .20, 

Twilight 2000 (1200).20, 

U96 .22, 

UFO .28. 

UMS Compilation .28. 

Ultimate Pinball .19, 

Walker .18. 

War in the Gulf .21, 

Western Front.19. 

When 2 Worlds War .19, 

Wing Commander .19, 

Wiz N Liz .17, 

Wiz Kid.18, 

Wolf Child.11. 

Zool 2 (A1200) .16, 


# FREE # FREE # WHEN YOU SPEND £30 OR MORE ON AMIGA GAMES YOU RECEIVE A ZOOL (WHILE STOCKS LAST) WORTH £9.99 FREE # FREE * 


UTILITIES 


EDUCATIONAL 


Amos 3D (Req Amos).22.99 

Amos Compiler (Req Amos) 19.99 

Amos Easy .22.99 

Amos Professional.32.99 

Amos Professional Compiler 24.99 

Deluxe Paint 4(1 Meg) .55.49 

Deluxe Paint 4 (AGA) .60.49 

Disk Box 80 Capacity .5.99 

Disk Box 100 Cap .7.99 

External Disk Drive.49.99 


Home Accounts 2 .34.99 

Kindwords 3 .29.99 

Maxi Plan 4.29.99 

Mini Office (Word Processor, 
Spreadsheet, Database and Disk 

Utilities) .35.99 

Mousemat.2.99 

The Publisher .29.99 

Wordworth V2.76.49 


A Kira.19.99 

Alfred Chicken .17.99 

Alien Breed 2.19.99 

Arabian Knights.10.99 

Bubba N Stix.19.99 

Bubble and Squeak.19.99 

Castles 2 .19.99 

Chambers of Shaolin .17.99 

Chuck Rock .10.99 

Dangerous Streets .17.99 

Deep Core.17.99 

Dennis .13.99 

D-Generation .17.99 

Donk .19.99 

Elite 2.19.99 

Genesia.19.99 

Gulp .19.99 

Gunship 2000 .19.99 

Inferno .19.99 


International Karate Plus... 10.99 

International Soccer.19.99 

James Pond 3 .23.99 

Jambala.17.99 

John Barnes .10.99 

Jurassic Park.19.99 

Labyrinth .17.99 

Legacy of Sorasil .17.99 

Lemmings.17.99 

Liberation .23.99 

Util Divil.19.99 

Lotus Trilogy .19.99 

Morph.19.99 

Microcosm.30.99 

Nick Faldo.23.99 

Nigel Mansell.19.99 

Pinball Fantasies .19.99 

Psycho Killer.19.99 

Robocod.19.99 


Ryder Cup.19.99 

Seek + Destroy.17.99 

Sensible Soccer .17.99 

Sleepwalker .19.99 

Summer Olympix .12.99 

Super Putty .10.99 

Surf Ninjas.19.99 

TFX.19.99 

Total Carnage .19.99 

Trivial Pursuit.19.99 

Trolls .19.99 

Ultimate Body Blows .19.99 

Uridium 2 .17,99 

Whales Voyage.19.99 

Zool.19.99 

Zool 2.19.99 


ADI English (1142) .16.99 

ADI French (1243) .16.99 

ADI French (13-14) .16.99 

ADI Junior Counting (6-7)14.99 
ADI Junior Reading (4-5) 14.99 
ADI Junior Reading (6-7) 14.99 

ADI Maths (11-12) .16.99 

ADI Maths (1243) .16.99 

ADI Maths (13-14) .16.99 

Fun School 3 (2-5) .14.49 

Fun School 3 (5-7) .14.49 

Fun School 3 (7+).14.49 

Fun School 4 (2-5) .16.49 

Fun School 4 (5-7) .16.49 


Fun School 4 Over 7.16.49 

Megamaths A Level.17.49 

Merlin Maths (741).16.99 

Micro English.17.49 

Micro French.17.49 

Micro German .17.49 

Micro Spanish .17.49 

Micro Maths .17.49 

Micro Science .17.49 

Noddys Big Adventure ...16.99 

Paint & Create .18.99 

Paint & Create (5+4) ...16.99 
Primary Maths (3-12yrs) 17.49 
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AUI Test Drive 



Stephen Broadbent test drives 
the Toccata board which might 
be the sweetest sound sampler 
to hit the Amiga. 


A picture of the board installed. 




MacroSystems have already made a 
name for themselves in the Amiga 
community thanks to the excellent 
VLab digitiser and the Retina 24 bit 
graphics card. With the 16 bit sam¬ 
pler Toccata they attempt to do for 
Amiga sound what the those two prod¬ 
ucts have done for video and graphics. 

The Toccata hardware is a 
Zorro 2 card which fits all big box 
Amigas, effectively ruling out its use 
on the A1200 and below. At the back 
of the board are the connections to 
the outside world, namely a stereo 
line-in, an aux input and stereo line 
out. On the board itself sitting next to 
a second auxiliary is the microphone 
input. It certainly looks impressive, 
but as all Falcon users, and no doubt 
the new Apple PowerPC people too, 
will tell you, the hardware is only as 
good as the software that supports it. 
Fortunately, this is an area where 
Tocatta shines. Packed on two disks, 
the first contains the main set-up 
software and Toccata Tools, with the 
sampler software Samplitude MS on 
the other. Set-up is taken care of 
automatically after the initial instal¬ 
lation by way of the user-startup or 
WB startup, whichever you prefer. 
The Toccata software, now updated 
to version 1.1 and with its own ARexx 
port, consists of a control screen, a 
jingle player, sample player (eight 
and sixteen bit) and of course, the 
recording software. Toccata control 
provides the interface to the hard¬ 
ware and this is where you begin to 
see what the board can really do. 
Mono and stereo sampling in 8 or 16 
bit, adjustable sample rates from 
5,513hz all the way up to 48khz, 
which is the standard for Digital 
Audio Tape recording. (Normal Amiga 
samples are usually recorded at 
22.05khz, CD quality is at 44,lkhz.) 

Direct to Disk 

As if that weren’t enough, the board 
also offers direct to disk recording 
and hardware compression, which 
are both essential in the world of 
modern sampling. From here we also 
control which input to use with a 


Each range is given a number (called 
playlists) and can be played back in 
the order selected. The programm 
does have its minus points however, 
complete lack of midi support will 
alienate many potential buyers of the 
card as will the non-existent SMPTE 
mode, essential for synchronising 
music to video. (However, an upgrade 
to Samplitude Pro II is available and 
offers both these features and more, 
including, among other things, Pure 
Digital Recording.) This should not 
worry users of Macrosystems VLab 
Y/C though, because as the otherwise 
well written documentation fails to 
mention, selecting the Toccata op¬ 
tion on VLab’s IFR control panel will 
not only grab the video sequence se¬ 
lected, but the soundtrack to go with 
it! Also, with the updated version of 
MediaPoint providing a module for 
Toccata and Scala promising one in 
the near future, the board’s future in 
the world of multimedia presenta¬ 
tions looks assured. 


Sanplitude MS V2.0^ von Titus Tost ©SEK'D 1993 C: 1.343.264 F : 1.676.848 

"fftiFf ' 16 bits L: 274.*96 H: 2. *9$.'588 ~ . ~ lana 







I I * I ■■=■« I — | WHH6E 1 «»► BI.I. [ » 1 ►» I ■ »*l 


Samples on show with the Toccata board. 


Conclussion 

What’s this? A review of a 16 bit 
sampler without a mention of the 
sound quality? 

Save the best ‘til last is my 
motto and that is definitely the case 
here. Put simply, the quality in both 
8 and 16 bit is stunning. A real pleas¬ 
ure to the ears. Buy it and see. AUI 

Toccata Board 


FEATURES 

90% 

EASE OF USE 

95% 

PERFORMANCE 

94% 

DOCUMENTATION 

85% 

VALUE FOR MONEY 

90% 

Overall Rating 

92% 

INFO 

Price: £370 


Contact: HiQ Limited 
176 Kenton Lane, Harrow, 
Middlesex HA3 8SU 
Tel: 081 909 3885 




choice of Line, Auxl, mic and mix, 
with mix combining the two auxiliary 
ports, thus allowing sampling from 
two separate sources at the same time. 
Another useful feature is the level 
indicator which helps in getting the 
signal strength at the right level be¬ 
fore sampling begins. 

Recording a sample is simplic¬ 
ity itself, with the user given a choice 
between the Toccata’s own recording 
software and the fully fledged sample 
editor on the sec¬ 
ond disk. Although 
the Toccata re¬ 
corder does an 
excellent job, it is 
very basic and has 
no editing functions 
built in. This is 
where Samplitude 
MS steps in. Incor¬ 


porating all the functions you would 
expect from a good sample editor, for 
example, cut and paste, amplitude 
control, the usual special effects as 
well as all the ‘ings (mixing, fading, 
shifting etc.), SMS stands out be¬ 
cause of its advanced range control 
and use of “projects”. A project can be 
either Mono (a single sample), Stereo 
(two samples) and Quadro, whereby 
a quadro project allows four mono or 
two stereo samples to be played si¬ 
multaneously and 
saved as one sam¬ 
ple. The range 
control is not hin¬ 
dered by only being 
able to select one 
range within a 
sample, but any 
number of ranges 
desired by the user. 


The board itself looks pretty much like any other coll¬ 
ection of chips, but the results are another matter. 


A test screen taken with samples. 


A mixture of the requesters on offer. 


30 


AUI • JULY 1994 








































































































































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+3026 FLYING LESSONS 
Excellent Anim, Requires 2MB 
+2983 (ABC) CHARLEY CAT 
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+2970 (ABCD) CHARLEY CAT 
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+2872 (ABCD) MEAN MACHINE 
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+3084 DD > HD MODIFICATION 
How To Convert Power Drive 
To Read DD’s As HD' Disks 
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Run CD32 Games On CDTV 
When Parnetted To A1200. 

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Simple Cheque Book Manager 
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Upgraded C64 Emulator. 

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Easy To Use Parnet Clone! 

+3069 STEREOSCOPE 
Shareware Stereograph Creator 
+3065 X-PASSWORD 
Hard Drive Password Util 
+3063 COLOUR SWAP 
Swap Picture / Pallette Colours 
+3062 TELETITLE 2 LORES 
Now Merged With TeleScroll I 
+3058 VARK CLI UTILS 4 
Compilation Of C.LI Utils. 

+3054 ASI MULTIVISION AGA 
GFX Utils For AGA Machines. 
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Hot Utils For Your Citizen Printer 
+3054 ASI FIX DISK II 
Loads More Compatibility Utils. 
+3051 ACCOUNT MASTER 2.21 
Update To Popular Accounts Pkg 
+3052 EAGLEPLAYER 
Superb 700K Module Player!! 
+3048 VIDEOTRACKER 
Make Your Own Hot Rave Demos 
+3040 ROBS HOT STASH #1 
All The More Commonly Asked 
For Utils Compiled By Our Rob! 
+3025 GOLF GURU VI .2 
Keeps Golfing Averages Etc. 
+3023 TELESCROLL V2.0 
Updated Video Titler. 


DEMO DISKS 


ODD BITSES! 


X3088 HAJIME CARDSET 
X3087 ANIME CARDSET 
X3086 FACES CARDSET 
X3085 CINDY CARDSET 
Superb AGA Cardsets For Use 
With Klondike AGA! 

+3080 (ABC) ASGARDS CHEAT 
Mega Game Cheat Compendium 
+3079 TOTAL IRRELEVANCE 6 
More Hot MED Users Tips! 


GRAPEVINE 19! 

Ok, You Can Stop All The 
Enquiries! Its Here At Last! 
Grab Yours Now! £4.00 Inc. 


+3078 TOTAL IRRELEVANCE 5 
Disk Mag For MED Users #5 
+3067 MAG.E ISSUE II 
More Gothic D&D Stuff. 

+3057 JCB SAMPLES #1 
Jazz, Classical & Blues Samples 
+3056 WICKED SPEECH SMPL 
Collection Of Vocal Samples 
+3034 FI SOURCE 
Loads Of Amos Source Code! 
+3024 PSYCHO IMAGINE OBS 


+3077 (AB) PASTEL VANILLA 

Some Nice Amiga Toons. 

+3074 FRIENDS OF PAULA 2 
Even More F.O.P Mods! 

+3073 FRIENDS OF PAULA 1 
4 More Great F.O.P Modules 
+3070 FRIENDS OF PAULA 5 
More Musak For Paula Fans 
+3066 INFINITY 
Very Nice Plazma Cycle Demo. 
+3061 (AB) SEVEN SEAS S/S 
Superb Gothic Fantasy Slides 
+3055 DEVOLUTION SLIDES 2 
Excellent Raytraced Artwork 
+3033 BIOMECHANOID 
Well Ambient 600K Music Mod! 
+3031 HIRED GUNS MUSIC 
Possibly The Best Ever Musak! 
+3029 (AB) THE MIDNIGHT HR 
Original Music Composition 
+3027 3D STEREOGRAM PICS 
HAM Stereograms To Boggle! 
+3006 SONGS FROM T’ GUIDE 

Rob Baxter Presents. 

+2973 NEURAL ASSAULT 
Excellent Dance Demo By Rage 
+2968 ARTE DEMO BY SANITY 
Very Nice, Alternative Demo 
+2965 NEOPLASIA - PHOBIA 
Great Music Disk, Not Usual Stuff 
+2960 ZONE WARRIOR 
Another Nice Music Presentation 
+2950 RINK A DINK (NOT AGA) 
Superb New Melon Demo!! 

+2948 DREAM TRIPPIN 
Digitals Latest Demo Production 
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Great Demo By Nuance. 

+2919 (AB) SPACE BALLS! 

9 Fingers Demo. If You Liked 
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SERIOUSLY GOOD! 


EDUCATIONAL 


+3038 KIDS DISK II 

+3037 KIDS DISK I 

Great Kids Stash Compilations 

+3036 KIDS DTP V2.6 

An Update To The Popular DTP. 

+3017 ILLUSIONS 

Animated Art Package. Great! 

+3007 KIDS DTP EXTRAS 

Stickers, Pics Etc For Kids DTP 

1+2984 A-Z PAINT 

Great Paint Prog For Young Kids 

+2967 SMARTY PAINTS 

Serious Art For Kids, Preview Ver 

1+2966 KIDS DISK 3 

Shareware DTP For Kids. 

+2926 (AB) TOME OF MYTHS 
Read All About Those Myths.... 
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Even More Educational Progs! 
X2916 (AB) TUTANKHAMUN 
Pics & Descs Of Toots Loot! AGA 
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Err, Test French Verbs! 

+2886 AZ SPELL V2.02 
Wot Du Ya Meen Ye Can Spel? 


AGA DEMOS 


X3091 FATAL MORGAN A AG A 

Groovy AGA Ostrich Demo! 

X3046 (AB) BIG TIME SENSUAL. 
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X3016 FAIRLIGHT FULL MOON 
Superb. Fairlight Do It Again. 

X3015 NOXIOUS: 

Demo Titled ’Beyond Belief 
X3014 (ABC) INNESTATION 
Present Ray World. Excellent. 
X2934 VOLCANO AGA 
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X2933 (AB) COMPLEX "ORIGIN" 
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X2930 XANADU - EXPLICIT II 
Another Worthy AGA Presentation 
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X2891 TROJAN AGA 
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X3076 (AB) BODYSHOP 7 
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X3075 (AB) BODYSHOP 6 
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HH 


AUI Test Drive 



Y ou will probably have noticed 
that the fastest growing area 
of computing at the moment is 
that of multimedia. The heart 
of this technology is the CD-ROM. By 
itself the CD-ROM is not multimedia, 
but it is most definitely the medium that 
much software will be distributed on in 
the future. 

AUI carried the world’s first 
Amiga CD coverdisk a few months 
ago and PC mags have also occasion¬ 
ally used them. However if you look in 
the newsagents now, there has been 
an explosion in the number of CD 
ROM coverdisks. I know that most are 
for the PC, but the basic technology is 
the same and the Amiga community 
has benefited and will benefit even 
more from this upsurge in interest. 

The heart of the system is the 
CD ROM drive, the number in use has 
now pushed the price down to a point 
where £100 will buy a very basic unit. 
This low price has meant that it is 
economical forthird party manufactur¬ 
ers to develop products for platforms 
other than the PC, namely the 
Amiga. 



Andy Eskelson tests out the 
Mitsumi CP ROM drive, the 
serious side of the medium 


that will carry the future of 
computing. 


This story starts back in Feb¬ 
ruary 1994 when Brian Fowler put up 
a message on the CIX conferencing 
system asking for comments and in¬ 
terest in a CD ROM system for the 
Amiga. Brian must have been happy 
with the response, as he now has the 
product available for sale. 

The system is based on the 
very well known Mitsumi CD ROM 
drive and what you actually get is a 
complete PC system includ¬ 
ing interface card and 
software, not 
JH9R%; much use to 
BBSs the Amiga! 

Included in 
the box 



were three PC CD-ROMs, more about 
these later. 

The Amiga interface is a small 
postcard sized unit made by Alfa Data. 
Alfa Data has been in the Amiga Busi¬ 
ness for quite a few years and I have 
been using their 256 level Hand Scan¬ 
ner and interface for a couple of years 
without any problems at all. 

Hardware 

The hardware supplied is the Mitsumi 
CD ROM Drive. This comes in two 
versions, either a single or a double 
speed unit. The model under review is 
the double speed drive. 

This is a standard 5.25 inch 
form factor, with rear connections for 
the interface, power and Audio. The 
front panel has the CD Drawer, CD 
Eject button 3.5 mm headphone 
socket 
and a 
manual 
volume 
con- 

__HW trol - 

1 ■/ The 

/Alfa Data 
interface is 
about the size of a 
postcard and has 8 
chips, two connectors and a 
few other components on it. The 
layout and design is very clean and 
simple. I would not expect to encoun¬ 
ter any problems with this at all. 


And here it is, the CD ROM. 


Software 


The Alfa Data interface comes with a 
single 3.5 inch disk that contains all 
the required software. 


There are three handbooks supplied 
with this system. The first is the CD 
ROM Drive handbook. This has a lot of 
information for PC users, but don’t 
throw this away, as it also have the 
connector information and instructions 
on how to release the CD Drawer if the 
power fails. 

The Alfa Data interface has 
two handbooks, the first is for the CD 
ROM interface and the other is for the 
HD Installation Tools. This is the first 
bonus, the interface has two connec¬ 
tors on it. One is for the CD ROM, and 
the other is for an IDE Hard Drive, or a 
removable media drive. 

Requirements 

This product is designed to fit inter¬ 
nally so you will need: 

Amiga 1500, 2000, 3000 or 
4000 with a free Zorro expansion slot 
and 5.25 inch drive bay. You will also 
need a free large power connector. 
WB2.04 or better is MANDATORY. 


Fitting 


If you have ever fitted a drive or other 
internal unit to the Amiga, this part of 
the installation will be nothing new. 
Disconnect all mains and open up the 
Amiga. Locate the CD ROM Drive in 
the 5.25 bay, but connect all the rear 
connectors first. (Interface lead and 
power) 

Make sure that you align pin 
one on the connector with pin one of 
the lead. If you have an A4000 you can 
make use of the internal audio con¬ 
nector. To do so, you will have to cut 
off the end of the audio lead supplied 







































AUI Test Drive 



Instal¬ 


lation 


with the CD ROM and replace it with a 
3 way 0.1 inch connector. Maplin Elec¬ 
tronics are one source of such con¬ 
nectors. (Order codes BX97F and 
YW25C) Fitting the drive in the 5.25 
bay was the only problem area that I 
encountered. The screw holes in the 
mounting chassis were slightly too 
small to allow the mounting screws to 
pass through. A simple cure, remove 
the chassis from the Amiga and then 
drill out the holes slightly, or as I did, a 
couple of turns with a tapered 
reamer was enough to do the job. 
Refitting the chassis, and fitting 
the drive was a simple job after 
that. 

If you are fitting the drive 
to an A3000 or 4000 you will find it 
much easier if you use the upper¬ 
most Zorro slot for the interface 
card. You do not need and rear 
panel space, as the card 
has no mounting 
bracket 
at all (it 
is that 
small) 

Connect 
the inter¬ 
face cable to 
the CD ROM 
connector 
and that’s it. 

Reassemble 
the Amiga and 
proceed to the 
software installa¬ 
tion. 


and use this utility and you have a 
standard CD player. The Audio quality 
is very respectable and PlayCD pro¬ 
vides a good range of facilities for this 
function. 

Operation 

You will need a CD ROM of some 
sort, the AUI coverdisk will do, but 
don’t expect the CD32 programs to 
run! But the Coverdisc on this issue 


Remember the PC CD ROMS that I 
mentioned? Well, pop one of them in 
the drive and up comes an Icon. The 
driver can sort out the conversion for 
these CD ROMs without you doing 
anything at all. 

You will need to use the show 
all files option from the Workbench, 
as PC files do not have any Icons, but 
you will find quite a few GIF files and 
such like. Remember that PPaint 
given away free on AUI Super Disk 31 


Quite a lot is made of the 
speed of CD ROM drives, so run¬ 
ning a tests by copying a big file, in 
this case the text of the Bible (on 
CDPD3) first the text was copied 
onto hard disk. The test was to com¬ 
pare the copy from hard disk to RAM 
disk, and then to repeat the test 
from CD DRIVE to RAM disk. A 
simple script file was used to drive 
the test so that everything should be 
the same. AUI 


You must have the 
hardware installed be¬ 
fore you start the soft¬ 
ware installation. This is because the 
installation process reads the type of 
hardware fitted and loads the correct 
versions of the software for you. 

The installation process is con¬ 
trolled by the Commodore Installer 
utility and you just tell it where you 
want to store the system files and let it 
get on with things. This is a very boring 
process that takes all of two minutes to 
perform. 

The software installed is: 

The CD ROM filesystem, a prefer¬ 
ences program and three utilities. 
Eject CD, this opens and closes the 
Drive drawer, and is provided be¬ 
cause the manual eject button is 
slightly awkwardly positioned. In use 
I found that I soon got used to where 
it was. 

KillDev, this removes the CD ROM 
filesystem from the Amiga’s memory. 
This is provided just in case you run 
into compatibility problems and you 
want to recover the memory and dis¬ 
able the drive for any reason. So far I 
have not had to use this utility. 
PlayCD, pop an Audio CD in the drive 


has plenty of CD Rom compatible 
stuff. However, a better bet are the 
superb CDPD 1,2 and 3 disks by 
Almathera. Pop a disk in the drive and 
in a few seconds the disk Icon ap¬ 
pears. Use it just as any other Amiga 
disk. I prefer to use a Directory utility 
for browsing, and for another reason. 


The CD ROM drive's interface. 

can read GIF files directly. 

The driver is slightly crippled 
as supplied designed for the Mitsumi 
package and it can only read ISO 
9660 format disks. The full spec driver 
can be used with any CD ROM and 
can read Rockridge and MAC HFS 
filesystems as well. 


Output of script: 

copying from hard drive to RAM: 

4947148 bytes 
Saturday 16-Apr-94 13:37:34 
Saturday 16-Apr-94 13:37:45 
Done 

deleting RAM file 
ram:The Bible Deleted 

copying from CD ROM to RAM:4947148 bytes 
Saturday 16-Apr-94 13:37:46 
Saturday 16-Apr-94 13:38:06 
Finished 

The process took: 

11 seconds from hard disk to RAM: approx. 450K/S 

20 seconds from CD to RAM: approx. 250K/S 

As the quoted transfer speed on the drive is 300-350K/S this result is 
well within the limitation of the software, hardware and test script!. 


RATINGS 


CD ROM DRIVE 


PERFORMANCE_95% 


FEATURES _90% 


EASE OF USE 100% 


DOCUMENTATION 90% 


VALUE FOR MONEY 90% 


Overall Rating 93% 


INFO 


Contact: 

Brian Fowler Computers Ltd. 

11 North Street, 

Exeter 
Devon 
EX4 3QS 

Tel: 0392 499755 

Price:Single Speed CD ROM Drive 
and Interface £199 Inc. VAT 
Double Speed CD ROM Drive and 
Interface £259 inc. VAT 


JULY 1994* AUI 


33 































AUI User Port 



for the course 

Barry McCarthy sees how the 


Personal Animation Recorder 


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Building a PAR anim. 


I expect most avid Amiga readers 
will by now, have heard of PAR, the 
Personal Animation Recorderfrom 
DPS Inc.hen I first read about it, it 
sounded like every animators dream 
come true. A device that allows you to 
record and play back, full PAL, 24 bit 
animations, at 25 frames per second. 
Itsounded highly unlikely but they said 
it worked. Then I saw the real thing 
ACTUALLY working, at one of the 
ACE seminars demonstrated by Joe 
Benzing of Commodore. 

Now, to me, this was a major 
break-through. Not only for what it did, 
but that it actually did prcicely what it 
said it did. Doesn’t sound unreason¬ 
able but how often have hyped prod¬ 
ucts been a let down? That’s the sort 
of thing that really hurts the Amiga and 
stops it being taken seriously in the 
professional market. Just look at Mac 
software, it’s either Good or Excellent. 
They just don’t release crap, because 
it wouldn’t sell. That’s how it should 
be. 

In the last issue AUI had re¬ 
view of the board from teh viewpoint of 
an enthusiastic user, but we decided 
that such a special Amiga develop¬ 
ment should be examined by some¬ 
one who would use it in a professional 
creative environment, to put the PAR 
to the professional test. 

_ System _ 

Computer - An A4000/040 with 18MB 
RAM, 250 MB IDE and the X-Calibur 
accelerator card. The PAR card. The 
AD3000 capture card. A1.7GigaByte 
Microplis IDE drive. 

Video - A Sony High-Band U- 
Matic suite. A Sony Beta-Cam suite. 
A Sony broadcast camera. A VHS and 
S-VHS cam-corder and VCR. 

Let s Go 

Installing the PAR card and the AD3000 
was not really a problem. It’s a bit tight 
in the A4000 but it all goes in. The 
harddrive was more of a problem. We 
had to drill some mounting holes in the 
side of the 5 1/4" drive bay but it went 
in. 

When all mv JPEGs were 
converted onto the PAR 
drive, it was time to 
record them to tape. 

The software was installed and 
then immediately updated via the DPS 
BBS in the satates. They seem to be 
updating the software every week or 
two. Excellent. The only problem is 
the lack of a feedback utility on the 
board. 

Now all we have to do is run 
the software and learn it. The manual 
is generally very good and very clear 


although some of the new additions 
and changes to the sofware are obvi¬ 
ously not mentioned. 

It took me about a day of fid¬ 
dling around with Q factors and block 
sizes to really say that I knew the 
system well. Not an inordinate amount 
of time. 

So let’s see how PAR can be 
used in an every-day professional 
setup. The ideal, is to have a perma¬ 
nent link from PAR to say, a Beta 
machine running in component video. 
This needs a total of 6 BNC leads. 3 
for output and 3 for input. This will 
provide you with the ultimate in qual¬ 
ity. 

The first thing I did was to 
create a GFX showreel, using a whole 
bunch of my backed-up JPEG 
animations. All you do, is set the PAR 
to Anim import with the Filter on, Q 
factor at 23 and the block size, in my 
case, at around 220 to 250. 

Now PAR will only really im¬ 
port IFF_24 bit files (now updated to 
include most IFF resolutions), so you’ll 
need another piece of software in be¬ 
tween. In this case the 1.3 version of 
Pegger does the job without a single 
problem. When it’s all set up, just 
select the files and press Import. PAR 
will take around 4 to 7 seconds to 
process each frame, plus JPEG de¬ 
compressiontime. When all my JPEGs 
were converted onto the PAR drive, it 
was time to record them to tape. 

£150 a Pay 

This is where you realise just how 
super dooper the PAR is. Just set an 
edit ‘in’ point and press play on the 
PAR, as soon as you want it to start. If 
your animation is 30 seconds long, it 
will take 30 seconds to lay it down to 
tape. 

With a frame controller and 
JPEG files, a 30 second animation 
would take around 6 and 1/4 hours to 
lay to tape. At Beta hire rates of 
around £150+ / day, that works out at 
about £150 or slightly less if you’re 
lucky. Ouch. That now makes each of 
your jobs more costly for your clients, 
or your profit margin has to go down. 

The other benefit of PAR, is 
that you can play your animations 
BEFORE you go to the expense of 
laying them to tape. That way, you 
KNOW if they are going to work or not. 

Capture 

The other posibility for the complete 
PAR system, is its ability to capture 
video in real-time. Yes, it really does 
work! But, there are limitations. 

In order to compress and save 
each frame of video on to the PAR 
drive, you must manually set the Q 
factor and block size for EVERY cap¬ 
ture. lfoundthatQ = 10andblocksize 
= 250 worked for most video clips. It 
depends entirely upon how much 


movement and scene changing there 
is in the video and how long the re¬ 
corded clip is. The longer and more 
complex, the lower the quality you can 
obtain. 

PAR saves each frame 
of animation or video 
as one frame in an 
animation. 

There are loads of superb pos¬ 
sibilities here: 

Timelapse with a camera. Just 
point it out of the window and wait for 
a day. Hey presto, a day, animated. 

Manual grabbing. Each time 
you press the mouse button, you grab 
another frame. Excellent for promo 
and MTV style stuff. 

You can even reverse video or 
play in variable slow-mo. I would 
suggest play back in field mode, not 


frame mode, or you’ll get jitter. How 
about some form of interpolation DPS? 
Another problem with reverse anims, 
is that all the interlaced line are now 
the wrong way round. It flickers oddly. 
Is there a way of reversing fields as 
well? 

On the whole, grabbing from 
video is good but not quite as good as 
the play back quality. It seems to be 
around High-Band U-Matic. 

Faot File 

It’s about here that I ought to make a 
few things really clear. The PAR is 
NOT a non-linear editing system. You 
would need a JPEG board for that. 
PAR saves each frame of animation or 
video as one frame in an animation. 
Each new frame is saved as delta- 
data. That is, only the differences 
between the last and current frame 
are saved. This is how it can all work 
so fast. You are not having to shift so 
much information around. This is also 


34 


AUI • JUNE 1994 



































































































































AUI User Port 



A perfect PAR grab. 


why complex animations may fail to 
play properly, without reducing the 
quality factor. 

The more the difference be¬ 
tween successive frames, the more 
delta-data there is and the more infor- 


takes time and negates the use of 
PAR as a non-linear editor. 

Everyday Use 

There is no doubt in my mind about the 



Another job done with PAR. 


mation the hard drive has to save 
every 25th of a second. 

Because PAR essentially cre¬ 
ates anim files (in its own format, of 
course), any editing of the files, such 
as cut and paste, requires the re¬ 
building of those edited anims. This all 


conclusion that I am coming to. PAR 
is wonderful. It will save loads of time 
and money and create a far more 
professional and efficient setup. The 
software and hardware are a dream to 
use. Simple, quick and bug free, with 
constant updates and useful help at 


the end of a phone. 

Output and playback quality is 
very clean indeed. Is it as good as 
Beta? I would have to say that it 
probably isn’t, quite. 

It never slows down, but in 
some cases, if you look very close, 
you can see slight distorting, where 
the compression has occured. This is 
acceptable as far as I’m concerned, or 
until my clients tell me otherwise, but if 
you’re very fussy, you might want to 
think again. 

Also, you’ll need to think care¬ 
fully about your rendering software. 
Good anti-aliasing and the ability to 
use Field Rendering are essential here. 
Lightwave 3.1 and Imagine 3.0 will 
both achieve this. Other than that, it’s 
all rather impressive. That is not to say 
that it is all perfect. There are a few 
niggles and questions: 


JPEG support for Import an 
Export of files seems essential to mi 
Is it on its way as promised? AREX 
scripts for batch processing of PA 
anims would be nice. 

SMPTE, time code support 
a big ommision at present but a maj( 
upgrade is adding this soon. 

Updates 

Transparent loading and saving t 
PAR. This means that any prograr 
will be able to load any PAR frame c 
save to PAR, with out having to sup 
port it directly. 

VTR emulation. This will b 
software and a seriel cable, to attac 
to an edit controller. The PAR will the 
be treated just as another VTR. > 
digital player, basically. This will b 
really useful! 



Striking a spinal chort... Part of a PAR anim. 


The ADPro 2.5 PAR loader 
only works in NTSC. It’s supposed to 
have been updated, but I haven’t seen 
it yet. Directory Opus 4.1 does NOT 
work with PAR. This is a problem with 
Opus, which is being fixed. 


Personal 

Conclusion 


The best piece of Amiga hardware 
since the Amiga A1000. AUI 


BIG THANKS 


My huge thankyous must go out to; 

Clive Vickary at the UK arm of DPS, for his help and friendly attitude. Tel: 
0252 718300. 

Brick from DPS in the USA for technical assitance and software update 
promises. 

John Reeves at Thame Systems Ltd, for the excellent Micropolis hard 
drive (IDE it may be but at 3.8 megabytes a second, sustained, it’s goddam 
fast!). By the way, Thame Systems sell some very nice products indeed. 
Give them a ring if you need fast IDE or SCSI or backup systems.Tel: 0844 
261226. 

v-; 


JUNE 1994 • AUI 


35 










































The world’s first 32 Bit CD games machine. Amiga audio sound. Upgradable to run Video CD including 
Advanced Graphics Chips. 256,000 on screen colours feature films and music videos* 32 Bit software for 
from a palette of over 16 million. CD (Digital) quality up to half the price of most 16 Bit cartridge games. 




Over fifty software titles available before Christmas. 
Plugs straight into your TV. Can play audio CD’s. State-of- 
the-art technology. Price only £299-99 complete with two 


great new games. Twice as fast and twice as powerful as 

any other games machine AMIGA CD 32 

you can buy. Game over. HAVE YOU 60T WHAT IT TAKES? 


'Video CD Module optional extra. 





AUI Test Drive 



T here is a very true saying 
that programmers are 
extremely quick to 
criticise the level of 
documentation contained within 
another programmer’s program, 
when they are just as guilty 
themselves of the same crime! 

This may seem to be rather 
a petty thing to comment on and it 
is true to say that for the short 20 
line program it should be fairly 
obvious as to what is going on 
(personally, I still maintain that at 
least a good descriptive header 
should be provided) 

Now let’s make things a bit 
more complicated and say there are 
2000 lines of code. Now this is a 
small project and you will find that 
you will need some comments in the 
code to jog your memory as to what 
bit of code does what. 


Andv Eskelson gets on the 
with a flowchart 


generating programmer’s tool. 


Now let’s make it even more 
complicated say you have 5 
programmers working on the same 
project, each tasked with writing 
10,000 lines of code. 

You can see that as the 
projects get bigger the need to 
accurately document your work gets 
even more important. Some people 
say that the documentation is even 
more important than the actual 
code. In the years that the program 
is being used, there will be occasions 
when the program will need to be 
modified. Maybe not by any member 






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of the original program-ming team. 
Whoever does the modifications will 
need to be very sure what the code 
is doing so that the modification can 
be done without causing problems 
elsewhere. 

What Is CASE? 

Now it is all very well talking about 
all this. Let’s take a look at one of 
the most common forms of 
documentation - the Flow Chart - 
most people will have seen one sort 
of flow chart at sometime, many 
domestic appliances use them as 
instruction guides. This is for the 
very good reason that they are 
designed to clearly show how an 
operation progresses; hence the 
name flow. 

What has this got to do with 
the Amiga? Well Fed-Case is a flow 
chart drawing tool. If it were just 
for this function, it would be a rather 
poor program, however there is a 
lot more to Fed-Case than just 
drawing flow charts. 

If I said that as well as 
drawing the flow chart, Fed-Case 
will also write the ‘C’ source code 
that the flow chart represents, you 
will begin to see that Fed-Case is 
something rather special. 

The name Fed-Case is a 
clue to what this program is. CASE 
is an acronym for Computer Aided 
Systems Engineering. 




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The manual covers 
everything, with only one exception. 


Installation 

Fed-Case is provided on two 
disks and uses the Commodore 
Installer utility for install¬ 
ation. Fed-Case can produce 
very well commented flow 
charts and also source code. 
The source code is also well 
commented. In order to 
write the source code Fed- 
Case needs access to your 
compiler include files. This 
caused me quite a bit of 
head scratching until I found a 
reference to this in the manual. A 
simple assign and all was well. 


I AUI • JULY 1994 


Manual 

The manual is a 150 page spiral 
bound A5 book so it lays flat on the 
desk. There are one or two minor 
printing errors in the manual, 
normally the page number just 
overwrites a character or two. This 
causes no problems whatsoever 
and I expect that later print runs 
will have this problem corrected. 
The manual is well indexed and 
very easy to use. There is one area 
lacking in the manual however. 
Fed-Case assumes that you know 
all about CASE. Now anyone 
buying Fed-Case may very well 
know about it, but I have to say 
that the appeal of this program 
could be very wide, IF there were a 
couple of chapters on actually 
USING Fed-Case. This is the one 
and only weakness in the entire 
documentation. 


Operation 

Using Fed-Case is very easy, once 
you have set up the correct assigns. 
The program has two main 
windows, one is the worksheet, and 
the other is essentially a small 
control panel. This panel has icons 
representing the various flow chart 
symbols. You click on the symbol 
and then paste it down onto the 
worksheet. This is the point that I 
get really frustrated about. For some 
reason the author has decided that 
clicking the RIGHT mouse button 
would be the best way to paste the 
symbol down. On the surface he is 
correct, but I have become so used 
to using the right mouse button to 
select menu functions that I end up 
with unwanted symbols all over 
the place. It would have been better 
to use another method of pasting 
the symbol, perhaps by double 
clicking? The author has said that a 
future release will address this 
aspect. 

Creating a program is a 
simple matter of placing the flow 
chart symbols onto the worksheet 
and connecting them together. It is 
normal for Fed-Case to make the 
connections automatically, but in 
some cases you have to make the 
decision instead of Fed-Case. This 
is normally the case when you have 






















AUI Test Drive 



The main screen of Fed. 




*/ 

Code generated by FED-CASE VI. 1 Code Generator 

----- */ 


*/ 


© Joosen Software Development 
All rights reserved 1993 


*/ 


* * Hi* * * * * 4: * ** * * * * * * 4: * * 4= * * ** * sfs * * * * * * sf: * * * * * % * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * % * * * */ 

/* */ 

/* Start of Includes */ 

/* */ 

/:f::f:5f::(;:}:sf:******************************************************************/ 

#include <exec/types.h> 

#include <data/const_arg.h> 

#include <stdio.h> 

y^^^c^^^^c^^^c^^c^c^^sj::}:^^*****************************************************/ 

/* */ 

/* End of Includes */ 

/* */ 

/* */ 

/* Start of source prototype file */ 

/* */ 

y**H;*********************************************************************/ 

#include <proto/proto_arg.h> 

/* */ 

/* End of source prototype file */ 

/* */ 


y************************************************************************/ 

/* Procedure : void main(FI_arg,FPCO_arg) */ 

/* Function : */ 

/* Designer : Christian Joosen */ 

/* Date : Sat Mar 05 21:39:02 1994 */ 

/* */ 

/* Modificat : */ 

/* Handler : */ 

/* Modific. : */ 

/* */ 

void main(FI_arg,FPCO_arg) 

int FI_arg; 

char *FPC0_arg[]; 

{ 

int LI_i; 

LI_i = 0; 

while( LI_i < FI_arg ) 

I 

printf! “arg %d is %s\n”, LI_i, FPC0_arg[ LI_i ]); /* printf: */ 

LI_i ++; 

} /* end of while(LI_i < FI_arg) */ 

} /* end of V_main */ 


multiple choice functions and a dif¬ 
ferent operation occurs depending 
on a result. 

Drawing the flow chart is 
only half the job however, you still 
have the give the exact command to 
any operation and this is achieved 
by inserting some text beside each 
symbol. If you put a function symbol 
onto the worksheet, you might enter 
printf(“this is the first result 
%d”,LI_var) 

next to the function symbol. 
Now you might notice something 
rather unusual about the variable 
passed to the printf command. 
LI_var, well the meaning of var is 
fairly obvious, it’s a variable. What 
about the LI_ bit that has been 
added. This is a system of defining 
what type the variable is. Fed-Case 
uses this information in its code 
generation and you must make use 
of it. It has a very useful side effect 
in that you can tell at a glance what 
the variable does. The code at the 
start of the variable can tell you if it 
is a Local, Global, Integer, Float 
Double, etc. so a variable indicated 
as LI_test tells us that the variable 
test is an Integer and Local to the 
function. This may sound like a 
long winded method, but I have 
spent quite a bit of time 
whizzing up and down source 
code, checking the types of 
the variables. This technique 
avoids the need to do this and 
is very simple! 

The worksheet is not 
very big, but it is big enough 
for most procedures and it is 
very easy to extend the 
worksheet to another page by 
the use of ‘connectors’ which 
is a standard method when 
drawing flowcharts. Not only can 
the worksheet have many pages, it 
can also have ‘chapters’ this is likely 
to be used for subroutines or other 
functions that you want to use. (This 
is one aspect of Fed-Case that could 
do with a bit more explanation on 
the manual) 

The generated code is also 
quite interesting. The following 
output is from a very simple program. 

All the code is AUTO¬ 
MATICALLY generated for you 
from the simple flow chart. Now 
you can see just what this program 
could mean. It enables you to 
produce clearly documented prog¬ 
rams, that are easily maintained. 

The speed of code generation 
is fairly good, but some ‘power users’ 
could get a little irked at it. A large 
project requires a lot of searching of 
the include files, so if you have the 
memory, load them into RAM: that 
speeds things up considerably. 


The other bonus is that if 
you have the necessary include files, 
you are not limited to producing 
source code for the Amiga, just about 
any platform can be catered for. 

The other aspect is print¬ 
outs, well, Fed-Case does provide 
printouts, via your normal prefer¬ 
ences printer, the output is just the 
same as the worksheets, but the 
quality is a little rough. This is be¬ 
cause a low level of graphic capabil¬ 
ity is assumes for the printer. The 
upside of this is that just about any 
printer will be useable and the out¬ 
put is not that bad. (If someone 
presented me with a software 
project documented with Fed-Case, 
I would be VERY happy with it.) 

Conclusion 

Fed-Case is unique to the Amiga. 
CASE tools exist for other platforms, 
but this is the only example of such 
a tool that I have come across. It is 
easy to use and is very powerful. 

This is NOT a program for 
the raw beginner, as it does assume 
that a working knowledge of C and 
the Amiga. 

But Fed-Case is one of those 
programs that fall into the ‘nice to 


have’ category, and will quickly be¬ 
come a must have for many pro¬ 
grammers once they have mastered 

it. AUI 


RATINGS 


FED-CASE 


FEATURES 

90% 

SPEED 

75% 

EASE OF USE 

60% 

DOCUMENTATION 

80% 

PERFORMANCE 

80% 

VFM 

80% 

Overall Rating 

77% 

INFO 


Price: £74.99 
Contact: 

Brian Fowler Computers Ltd 
11 North Street 
Exeter, Devon EX4 3QS 
Tel: 0392 499755 



JULY 1994 . AUI 


39 


















































AUI Test Drive 


T he first thing I tried out was 
the visual file selector which 
produces colour thumbnails 
of the pictures contained in 
the current directory. Dithering has 
now been employed which produces 
excellent results and it’s a lot faster 
than it was before. You still can’t travel 
back and forth between directories 
while on the thumbnail screen, and full 
screen images can’t be previewed. 
(Nor can sound or music files, or wipe 
transitions which is a big mistake con¬ 
sidering there are so many good look¬ 
ing effects to audition.) 



u 


p 


D 


A 


T 


E 






The Good, The 


The page editor is just the same (irri¬ 
tating compared with Scala), but some 
menus that were previously in win¬ 
dows have been given their own screen 
at the bottom of the page editor. This 
is a bad move because the bottom 
section of the screen is not visible 
when you’re in overscan mode, and 
nor (still) are the pull down menus! 
Mad! 

Good news! MP now has four 
levels of anti-aliasing. It actually adds 
anti-aliased pixels around the outside 
of the font which tends to make level 3 
and 4 anti-aliased fonts look quite bold. 
One thing that threw me about the 
anti-aliasing was that MP anti-aliases 
to whatever colour the background 
happens to be. That’s brilliant, and 
MediaPoint deserves a round of ap¬ 
plause for that! Nice one! 

Staying with text, you can now 
use underline in a separate colour 
from the text and text can be made 
see-through and outlined in any col¬ 
our. 


The Amiga’s newest multimedia 
package has been updated and 
Gary Fenton is updating vou! 
The version of MediaPoint 1 
reviewed in the May issue was 
125 which was shortly superseded 
bv 126. and now we have 127! Mv. 
Activa have been busy, so let’s 
see what’s new in 127. 


Anti alias to white 
using level 1... 


...anti anas to re 
using level 2... 


□□□( 


®ddgD (Mho® oosBoog 
QbwciO & 




...and of course, to 
black using level 4. 


Now you can anti-alias in 4 levels and it looks go no matter what colour 
the background is! 


Welcome to McDonald's! Make your choice: 


2,95 

McBacon 


1,95 

Hamburger 


A small selection from the 135 tiled back¬ 
grounds. Wild! 


Boxes (really called windows) 
can have up to 21 new patterns ap¬ 
plied to them and graphics can be 
optionally dithered using Floyed, 
Burkes, ordered or random techniques. 
The palette’s broadcast limit features 


4,95 


Big Mac 


[I Total: $4,95 


‘undo'jRM^ 


This tasty demo script comes with the 127 upgrade. Yummm, burgers. 


work in realtime so you can alter maxi¬ 
mum, minimum, and average colour 
levels and see the results as you move 
the mouse! Good idea! 

If you use a database which 
supports dbase files (most do) then 
you can load them straight into MP 
and select which records and fields to 
use. Very handy if you intend to use 
MP as an information system. 

Bathroom Tiles 

Instead of jamming up your hard disk 
with large hi-res background files, MP 
now employs “tiling” which takes a 
small IFF image and tiles the whole 
screen with it instantly producing a 
very impressive backdrop. 135 pre¬ 
drawn tiles come with MP127 including 
metal, grooved, paint, brick, graduated, 
wood, and heaps of others as shown 
in the example picture on this page. 

New Xapps include support 
for MacroSystem’s Toccata 16 bit 
sampler. This not only allows you to 
play back 16 bit audio but you can 
record as well! A Genlock Xapp can 
been included to toggle through the 
genlock modes on ECS and AGA 
Amigas. The SunRize Studio 16 Xapp 
is compatible with version 3 of the 
software, and an new Xapp for 
Selectra’s VuPort will control up to 8 
Panasonic AG-1960 VCRs! 

By chance I found that the 
runtime player no longer shows an 
annoying copyright message before 
playing your script. This is terrific news 
if you’re looking for a multimedia 
package which can happily play back 
scripts on machines without the need 
for dongles and copyright messages! 

Conclusion 

A few things still annoy me about MP, 
like having to save the page as a file 
every time you go back to the script 
editor, and some bugs which cause 
the computer to crash several times a 
day. I’ve got into the habit of saving my 
script every ten minutes. 

The best news of all is that the 
upgrade is totally free to registered 
users which will certainly put a big 
smile on their faces. It’s an important 
upgrade which gives MP some really 
neat features and, dare I say it, makes 
it a much more practical tool than 
before! Keep watching... AUI 


INFO 


Price: £299 Full Package 
FREE to registered users. 
Contact: 

Activa UK 

27A Tremaine Road 
Anerley 
London 
SE20 7UA 
Tel: 071 371 5241 


40 


AUI • JULY 1994 























































































AMITEK 


Friendly Technology 

Designed to bring you high quality and 
performance at affordable prices, 
AmiTek peripherals offer outstanding 
value-for-money. They are built to 
ensure easy fitting and trouble free 
operation - making them a pleasure to 
use. AmiTek products are also 
thoroughly tested and very reliable, so 
reliable that we are pleased to offer a 
full two year warranty on the AmiTek 
products detailed here. 


%RAM UPGRADES 

AMITEK FOR A500/A500plus/A600 ■ 2YR WARRANTY 

CODE DESCRIPTION INC VAT 

RAM 0505 A500 - 512K (No Clock) £20 

RAM 0510 A500 - 512K (With Clock) £25 

RAM 0520 A500PLUS - 1Mb RAM £30 

RAM 0605 A600 - 1Mb (No Clock) £30 

RAM 0610 A600 - 1Mb (With Clock) _ £40 

ffipCMCU^ARDS 

| AMITEK FOR AMIGA 600/1200 - 2YR WARRANTY 

CODE DESCRIPTION INC VAT 

I RAM 6020 A600/1200 - 2Mb Card £119 

[ RAM 6040 A600/1200 - 4Mb Card _ £179 

iSMODULATOR 


Ik 


— 


The AmiTek External Modulator makes an ideal 
replacement modulator for all Amiga owners. 
Everything needed is supplied. Like all AmiTek 
peripherals, it comes with an 
easy to follow manual. 

User friendly manual included 
High quality design 
FREE RF cable supplied 


MODULATOR 


INC VAT-MOA 4200 



38.56 


Maximise the processing power of your standard A1200. Be ready for the new 
generation of software which makes more demands on Amiga memory and 
technology. The AmiTek Hawk RAM expansion includes up to 8Mb fast 32-bit RAM, 
the ability to support a sophisticated 68882 FPU (Floating Point Unit - drastically 
increases the speed of maths intensive operations) and a battery backed up clock. 
Built to a high standard, this board can be easily installed and comes with a 2 year 
warranty. The Hawk RAM board is available in 9 pre-configured versions enabling 
you to select the model which best suits your requirements. 

► Plugs straight into A1200 trapdoor - 
No soldering required 

► Upgradeable FAST RAM board to 1,2,4 or 8Mb 

► Uses industry standard socketed SIMMs for 
easy upgrades 

► Two types of optional Floating Point Unit - 
33mhz or 40mhz PLCC 68882 co-processor 

► Comprehensive manual with illustrations 

► Works with all A1200 and A1200HD computers 

► Does not invalidate your A1200 warranty 

► 2 year warranty 

PRICES FROM ONLY 


1Mb RAM, NO FPU 


INCREASES OPERATION BY UP TO 40X 

FPU Speed -- 

Comparison 
in FLOPS (FLO 




FPU 

QO MHz 
JJ FPU 

40 FPU 

s 

■i Mb 

1 RAM 

£99 

£159 

- 

O Mb 

C. RAM 

£139 

£199 

- 

A Mb 
RAM 

£199 

£259 

£299 

Q Mb 
^ O RAM 

£399 

- 

£499] 


DELUXE FEATURES 

The AmiTek drive has been 
specially designed to meet the 
needs of Amiga users and has 
many deluxe features which are not 
included in other drives - check out 
the competition! 

ANTI-CLICK 

The anti-click feature stops your 
drive from making lengthy whirs 
and clicks that occur when the drive 
is empty and searching for a disk. 

ANTI-VIRUS 

The switchable Anti-Virus mode 
stops track 0 viruses infecting the 
disk while in the drive. Yet, unlike 
many other drives which have virus 
killers, this Anti-Virus mode can be 
disabled, allowing some fussy copy 
protected software to run. 


ADD ADDITIONAL 
DRIVES 

As a double sided mechanism, 
the AmiTek drive gives 880K of 
disk space after formatting. It is 
also daisy-chainable, which 
means that you may add further 
drives to your system and, uses 
very little power from your Amiga. 

HIGH QUALITY SONY 
MECHANISM 

AmiTek took the time to source a 
mechanism that has all the 
features, quality and reliability 
that Amiga owners have been 
crying out for. After vigorously 
testing Sony’s mechanism, it 
proved to be the best by far 
available. 


£99 

INC VAT - RAM 1210 


1Mb INTERNAL FLOPPY DRIVES 


AMITEK FOR AMIGA 500/500plus & AMIGA 600/1200 

A500/A500plus 


These internal AmiTek replacement 
drives are ideal for users who wish 
to replace their existing internal 
drive. 

The packs feature 
high quality 
internal iMb. 3/." 
drive mechanism 
for the Amiga 
500/500plus or 
Amiga 600/1200. 

All you need to fit your 
drive is included, plus easy 
to follow fitting instructions and 
24 months warranty. 


INTERNAL DRIVE 


£44 

INC VAT-DRI 3600 



Details taken 
from models 
available 
MARCH '94 

r 

ANTI¬ 

CLICK 

ANTI¬ 

VIRUS 

ROBUST 

STEEL 

CASE 

QUALITY 

SONY 

MECHANISM 

TOP RATED 
CU-AMIGA 

MAY ’94 90% 

2 1 
YEAR 

WARRANTY 

AMITEK 

/ 

/ 

/ 

/ 

/ 

/ 

CUMANA 

- 

- 

- 

- 

- 

- 

POWER E 

/ 

/ 

- 

/ 

- 

- 

l ZAPPO 

- 

- 

/ 

- 

- 

J 


• High Quality 2 > V " Sony 
Mechanism 

• Strong Metal Casing 

• Built-In Anti-Click Feature 

• Switchable Anti-Virus 
Mode 

• Enable/Disable Switch 

• 75ms Access time 

• Daisy Chainable Via Thru 
Port 


Low Power Usage 
No Need For 
External PSU 
2 Year Warranty 


EXTERNAL DRIVE 



INC VAT - DRI 1159 


c,\UC4 



THE SILICA SERVICE 


Before you decide when 
to buy your new Amiga 
products, we suggest you 
think very carefully about 
^ WHERE you buy them. 
k TO Consider what it will be like a 
few months after you have made 
your purchase, when you may require additional 
peripherals or software, or help and advice. And. will the 
company you buy from contact you with details of new 
products? At Silica, we ensure that you will have nothing 
to worry about. With our unrivalled experience and 
expertise, we can meet our customers’ requirements with 
an understanding which is second to none. Complete 
and return the coupon now for our latest FREE literature 
and begin to experience the “Silica Service". 

• FREE OVERNIGHT DELIVERY: 

On all hardware orders shipped in the UK mainland 
(there is a small charge for Saturday delivery). 

• TECHNICAL SUPPORT HELPLINE: 

A team of technical experts will be at your service. 

• PRICE MATCH: 

We match competitors on a “Same product - Same price” 
basis. 

t ESTABLISHED 15 YEARS: 

We have a proven track record in professional computer sales. 


• PART OF A £50M A YEAR COMPANY: 

With over 200 staff - We are solid, reliable and profitable. 

• BUSINESS + EDUCATION + GOVERNMENT: 
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• THE FULL STOCK RANGE: 

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• FREE CATALOGUES: 

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well as details on all software and peripherals. 

• PAYMENT: 

We accept most major credit cards, cash, cheque or 
monthly terms (APR 29.8% - written quotes on request). 

Qi|iCA L 


MAIL ORDER 

PLUS TECHNICAL AND HEAD OFFICE 

081-309 1111 


1-4 The Mews, Hatherley Road, Sidcup, Kent, DA14 4DX 

PLUS BRANCHES AT: 

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081-688 4455 

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Debenhams (5th Roor), 97 Argyle Street 

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Debenhams - OPEN 20/6/94 

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Debenhams - OPEN 6/6/94 

0582 21201 

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Debenhams (3rd Floor), Market Street 

061-832 8666 

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Debenhams - OPEN 13/6/94 

0752 266666 

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Debenhams (3rd Floor), The Moor 

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1-4 The Mews, Hatherley Road 

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SOUTHAMPTON Debenhams (1st Roor), Queensway 

0703 223888 

SOUTHEND 

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0702 468039 


To: Silica, AMUSR-0794-213, 1-4 The Mews, Hatherley Rd, Sidcup, Kent, DA14 4DX 


PLEASE SEND ME A 64 PAGE AMIGA CATALOGUE 


Mr/Mrs/Miss/Ms: . Initials: 


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Which computer(s), if any, do you own? 


. 213B J 


E&OE • Advertised prices and specifications may change • Please return the coupon for the latest information. 

























































































































































AUI Test Drive 


I 


It’s quite rare for me to go 
overboard about a language 
that is ‘relatively obscure’ but 
that is exactly what I’m doing 
this month and for very good rea¬ 
son. The language is UniComal’s 
Amiga Comal which is their Amiga 
version of the high-level Comal 
programming language. 

Comal was developed in the 
mid seventies as an alternative to 
Basic for teaching programming. 
The driving force for this was obvi¬ 
ous because early implementations 
of Basic left much to be desired. 
There was a lack of decent ‘struc¬ 
tured programming’ constructs, no 
while/wend loops, no label-oriented 
decision test branching, no proce¬ 
dures with local variables, and 
plenty of other shortcomings. 

In fact, had Basic stayed as 
it was in the early days Comal 
would have wiped it from the face 
of the earth. The reason it didn’t 
was that the Basic language ma¬ 
tured and many of its 
shortcomings were 
rectified. Multiple line 
function definitions, 
local variables, proper 
procedures with for¬ 
mal parameters are 
now commonplace in 
most Basic implemen¬ 
tations. 

Like Basic, 

Comal is an easy lan¬ 
guage to learn and 
many of the Comal 
keywords are so simi¬ 
lar to Basic that you 
might easily think 
that a Comal program was a Basic 
program. Nevertheless, many dif¬ 
ferences do exist and today Comal, 
from an academic viewpoint at 
least, is still a far better language 
than Basic will ever be. 

Comal supports the use of 
‘records’ which allow groups of re¬ 
lated variables to be logically tied 
together (so serving the same pur¬ 
pose as a C ‘structure’). If you were 
writing an appointment diary pro¬ 
gram you might, for instance, set 
up an ‘appointment’ record that 
held time, day, month and appoint¬ 
ment details. Blitz Basic 
incidentally does provide similar 
‘structure oriented’ facilities with 
its NewType variables but most 
Basics do not. 

Comal allows recursion 
(permitting a procedure to call it¬ 
self) and it supports the idea of 
pointers, the use of variables which 
hold the addresses of other vari¬ 


Amiga 

COMAL 

Paul Overaa test drives an Amiga 
programming language that may not be 

getting the exposure it deserves- 


ables. Pointers, as any C program¬ 
mer will tell you, are extremely 
important for implementing lists 
and all sorts of other data struc¬ 
tures. 

“Packages” 

One of Basic’s many disadvantages 



separate file. Comal programmers 
use them to build up libraries of 
easily accessible routines, or just 
to divide up large programs into 
more easily understood modules. 
Again this is just the sort of benefit 
that C and assembler program¬ 
mers are used to having. 

Amiga Comal 
provides a large se¬ 
lection of packages 
and there’s even one 
that provides ‘rela¬ 
tive’ graphics (i.e. 
Turtle graphics). 


64142 bytes free 


□I RnigaCOMRL Execute Window 


a I RnigaCOMRL Connand Window 

***** -ueno version- **** 

Copyright UniConal fl/S 1990,1991. 
RU rights reserved. 


0010 USE UNI GRAPHICS 
0020 

0030 graphicscreen(4) 

140 naxy#: =he ight#0.9375 
c 0 


Amiga Comal’s system link packages provide the programmer 
with easy to use ‘Basic-like’graphics facilities. 


31 


is that implementa¬ 
tions are usually 
provided with lots of 
integral I/O and 
graphics commands. 

Now it may seem use¬ 
ful, when you first start pro¬ 
gramming, to have a language that 
provides inbuilt graphics keywords 
and functions - but after you’ve 
tried to port a few programs to 
other machines you soon realise 
that it is actually far better to keep 
the input/output (I/O) stuff iso¬ 
lated from the main elements of 
the language and this is exactly 
what Comal does. Amiga Comal 
then is not an ‘I/O Amigatized’ 
language like say AMOS - instead 
it uses interface ‘packages’ to pro¬ 
vide links to things like Amiga 
graphics. 

A package is a collection of 
procedures or functions, or a sec¬ 
tion of program code, held in a 


0070 piSttext(45,laxvH+2,"Colour 
0080 FOR c:=1 TO 15 00 

0890 . 

0100 


noveto<0,0> 
pencolor(c) 

drawto<100+30#c,naxytt) 

_ Plottext(102+30#c,naxy#+2,str$(c)) 

0130 ENDFOR c 

0140 textstyle(2+4+16) 

0150 p lot text <500,50,"Press any key") 

0160 WRIT 

0170 textscreen 

0063: Out of nenory (0030) 


Amiga Comal is an idea beginners' language 

The most important thing how¬ 
ever is that packages are provided 
which give function call type inter¬ 
faces to the important Amiga 
run-time libraries Exec, DOS, In¬ 
tuition, graphics etc. In addition to 
this there are packages which han¬ 
dle Amiga devices, messages, 


INFO 


Price: £74.03 
Contact: 
MacharSoft, 

5 Elm Grove 
Newton Stewart 
Wigtonshire DG8 6JT 
Tel: 0671 403441 


screens, windows and so on. 

The benefit in short is that 
lot of otherwise complicated 
operating system and Amiga 
programming becomes very 
straightforward. A good example 
here is the loadscreenO procedure 
which uses the iffparse library to 
load and display an IFF picture - a 
complicated job made very easy 
indeed! 

Comal, like Basic, offers rapid 

high-level development 
environment, with none of the 

difficulties inherent in Basic. 

High Level 

Comal has a reputation for being a 
language for beginners, but after 
using Amiga Comal for a few weeks 
it is clear that it deserves much 
more than this. Now I know that 
most programmers who move onto 
C or assembler tend to dismiss, or 
perhaps actively hate, all forms of 
Basic but if you fall into this class 
of user then it might be time to 
think again. Comal, like Basic, of¬ 
fers rapid high-level development 
environment, with none of the dif¬ 
ficulties inherent in 
Basic. If, in fact, you 
are a proficient C or 
assembler coder and 
know how the 
conventional run¬ 
time libraries are 
used, you are likely to 
feel very at home with 
the Comal pointer, 
record and package 
ideas. 

You’ll also find 
it easy to mix Amiga 
Comal with your C or 
assembler code in a 
clean way and to integrate your 
existing Amiga knowledge into the 
Amiga Comal environment. 

Amiga Comal provided a 
pleasant surprise for me and I’d 
recommend it to anyone who fan¬ 
cies trying an easy to use, well 
structured, language. AUI 


RATINGS 


Amiga Comal 
Version 2.10 


FEATURES 


DOCUMENTATION 


EASE OF USE 
VALUE FOR MONEY 


Overall Rating 90% 



42 


AUI • JULY 1994 

















































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AUI Edutainment 


Fun Learning 

Martin Witton paints the 
rainbow and charts the 
progress. 


This is a f isi of creepy creofores tie do not \ ike. 
Complete the block graph: 


— 


■ 


Sluoc 


Spiders 2 

Slugs 4 

Morris 3 

Beetles 2 


■ 

INHI r 

Player l> 


Correct >50)1 

; 

1 

Tiner XJff 
Boms »/ 


GT03S )\ 

■nBBBI ■ MB 


Drop blocks and bombs to correct the graph. 


MATHS STATISTICS 


10 OUT OF TEN EDUCATIONAL 
SOFTWARE 


F rom the formidable to the fa¬ 
miliar, Maths Statistics offers 
the tried and tested formula of 
other programs in this series. 
Had I not reviewed SmartyPaints first, 

I might have been daunted by the 
subject of statistics, but knowing the 
style that 10 Out of 10 have success¬ 
fully developed, it was quite a relief to 
try it out! 

Covering major areas of the 
National Curriculum attainment target 
5, the program is geared to 6 to 16 
years. 

Parents may wonder why 
Maths Statistics with such topics as 
Probability, Charts and Data Handling, 
starts with such junior school children, 
but as with Maths Algebra, which won 
the AUI Edutainment program of the 
year award in 1993, approaches to 
learning have moved on considerably 
since most adults’ own school days. 

Take graphs for example, 
much project work, which is utilised 
throughout the school curriculum, can 
be illustrated with computerised graph¬ 
ics, and this program through the char¬ 
acteristic fun approach can help chil¬ 
dren of all ages understand the basis 


of the required concepts. ‘Bomber’, 
the first game in chart format asks the 
player to reshape the graph to match 
the information. 

‘Survey’ requires observation 
skills to spot common sights - types of 
birds, insects etc. The results are ana¬ 
lysed and recorded in a statistical way. 
‘Cheers’ is presented in a snakes and 
ladders format (10 Out of Ten usually 
manage to adapt this game to the 
subject in hand!) 

Traditional computer game 
formats are utilised - the shoot ‘em up 
' Sniper’ offers arcade action combined 
with questions about various types of 
charts and graphs. 'Whack It’ shows 
the fairground shooting target game 
while learning useful facts. 

Finally, ‘Archer’ requires a care¬ 
ful aim and fire at balloon, but inevitably 
you have to get the answers right too. 

There is an added bonus of a 
free game included - Wordfit, designed 
to improve spelling of words connected 
with statistics 

With three sets of age corre¬ 
lated graphics, certificate and assess¬ 
ment printing for up to 64 children and 
achievement record to measure each 



Popping the balloon isn't easy. 


child’s progress, 10 Out Of Ten has 
come up trumps again with this easy to 
use program by providing a fun way to 
learn about a different aspect of Maths. 
I know that 10 Out Of Ten themselves 
think that this is possibly the best 
edutainment program they have pro¬ 
duced - and they could be right. 


RATINGS 


9/10 


INFO 


Ten Out of Ten Educational Systems 
1 Percy Street Sheffield S3 8AU 
Tel: 0742 780370 
Price: £25.95 


SMARTYPAINTS 


S martyPaints is a new package 
for parents and kids who are 
serious about computer graph¬ 
ics. It shares file formats with 
other Amiga paint software and uses 
standard fonts. It doesn’t need drop¬ 
down menus and the user can see at a 
glance which functions are switched on. 

The program can be custom- 
configured with text or icon buttons and 
has three options from the Smart menu 
system. These are: a workscreen/ 
Menuscreen format with the Smart 
Menu deselected; a DPaint like format 
with the Smart menu overlayed by the 
Smart menu; or a combination of both 


with the Smart menu used as a sup¬ 
plement to the main menu. 

The configuration can be saved 
to disk. When the program is reloaded, 
it is returned to the same state as 
before, which enables individual disks 
to be made for different family mem¬ 
bers. Any work you produce with the 
SmartyPaints can be printed on any 
standard printer. 

Although SmartyPaints has 
been designed for use by children, some 
adult help may be needed to get going 
particularly to set it up for individual use. 

Children are unlikely to want to 
read the manual, and usually try out 



_ 


jj \m 




I 

Pm 

£>3 


Make your favourite football strip come to life. 


44 


AUI • JULY 1994 

























































£)?;?»'/il LIME 


[SB] 

11 J1 1 J i awnniiMi 

—r~ri— 

f IF IC/TIfSIBtt Ji_ 

WOEZDEiaCDEaCIJElElEIDEIESlEaElCXDEll 


Now where did I leave that treasure, me hearties? 


new programs by trial and error! This 
is not recommended for this program, 
as many aspects could be missed. For 
example, we found that with 23 func¬ 
tions which can be custom chosen for 
inclusion in the Smart menu, it can be 
stacked up with often-used buttons or 
loaded and locked with the limited 
range of tools needed for asmall child’s 
use. This we found was helpful to start 
with when trying out the program, to 
save confusion! 

The main menu has a plethora 
of possibilities and depending how fa¬ 
miliar the user is with paint programs, 
the ‘language’ may be confusing. Draw 
XOR for example is an intricate instruc¬ 
tion when colours can be made to com¬ 


bine with those already on screen in a 
different way to normal. 

The 16 predefined pattern 
blocks are arranged with one solid col¬ 
our for the first pattern block and the 
rest have a pattern made from colour 
one with a background from colour 2. 

I would not recommend you 
use the program initially without giving 
yourself time to explore the fonts, draw¬ 
ing functions, modes, brush functions 
and text. This would ideally be when 
the children are not around as it does 
need a serious amount of concentra¬ 
tion. I was fortunate in having one of 
those rare occasions when all my prog¬ 
eny were out, and it is unlikely that I 
would let them loose on it before I’d 


AUI Edutainment 



project work too. A preview version is 
available from Chroma for you to try 
before you buy. The program runs on 
any 1Mb Amiga. 


RATINGS 


! 7/10 I 


INFO 


Contact: 

Chroma Computer Images 
153 Holt Road, Fakenham, Norfolk 
NR21 8JF. Tel: 0328 862693 
Price: £28.50 


had a few tries myself. No doubt, once 
they got the hang of the rudiments 
they were telling me what to do, but in 
the meantime I was able enjoy the 
luxury of being one Amiga-step ahead! 
It didn’t last long. 

Comparing it to other paint pro¬ 
grams we have tried, this is undoubt¬ 
edly the most complicated but the re¬ 
wards come with the more advanced 
outputs. 

For children of 5 - 13 years, 
although it would be useful for GCSE 


What would be complete without a dinosaur picture? 


AUI Hard Copy 


Mastering AmigaPOS 3 


Volume One 


T he facilities provided by 
AmigaDOS have grown 
considerably over the last few 
releases and it is now a substantial 
subject in its own right. Because of this 
just learning how to use the AmigaDOS 
operating system can be a rather 



Mastering Amigados 3 is now available. 


daunting prospect for the new Amiga 
user and this is where this type of 
tutorial book comes into its own. In fact 
this latest edition results in a two volume 
setthat contains well overeight hundred 
pages of reference and tutorial 
AmigaDOS material. 

The aim of this particular volume 
is, quite simply, to provide tutorials that 
get you into the world of up-to-date 
AmigaDOS usage as quickly as 
possible. The overall format of this new 
volume is similar to previous versions 
and there is plenty of common ground. 

Nevertheless, along with the 
general updating that has occurred a 
fair amount of new material has been 
provided. There are, for example, some 
useful notes on Intellifont (Fountain) 
outline fonts in this new edition along 
with expanded overviews of the general 
structures of AmigaDOS commands 
and command parsing strategies. 

You’ll also find additional notes 
on the management of files and 


Reviewed by Paul Overaa 


directories, use of file attribute flags 
and so on. Script files, as might be 
expected, have been dealt with in a fair 
amount of detail and there are good 
accounts of the purposes of the various 
startup sequences (including, of course, 
the new AmigaDOS 3 start up script). 
As before help is provided for users 
who wish to modify such scripts. 

This volume then concentrates 
on the general usage issues that 
underpin the AmigaDOS operating 


system as a whole. Although there are 
a number of chapters which tackle more 
advanced uses of specific AmigaDOS 
commands the main details of the full 
AmigaDOS command set are, as with 
the previous editions of these books, 
left forthe second volume in this series. 
The new edition is well written and 
informative. Most import-antly though it 
is easy to read so it will be particularly 
useful to anyone who finds AmigaDOS 
an intimidating subject. AUI 


INFO 


Title: Mastering AmigaDOS 3 Volume One (Tutorial) 

Authors: Mark Smiddy and Bruce Smith 

Published by: BSB Books Ltd. 

ISBN: 1-873308-20-5 

Price: £21.95 

Available from: BSB Books Ltd. 

Freepost 242, P0 Box 382, St Albans, Herts AL2 3BR 
Telephone: 0923-894355. 


JULY 1994* AUI 


45 
























































AUI User Port 



GOING 

FLOPTICAL 

Floptical drives are probably the 
ultimate development of the 
floppy disk drive: they use lasers 
to achieve super-precise tracking 
on a 31/2 inch floppy disk and so 
can squeeze on over 20Mb. 
Specially constructed floppy 
disks are needed to support this 
density of information recording 
though, costing £10 or £15 each, 
but the drive can read standard 
floppy disks as well. 


From floppy to hard 
and from hard to 
magneto-optical. 
Michael Rumbelow 


impinge on neighbouring track infor¬ 
mation. When it is reading or writing a 
track the disk spins past the heads at 
a rate of over 300 revolutions per 
second, ten times as fast as an LP on 
a record-player. 


takes vou inside the 
mysteries of disk 
drives and other 
amazing storage 
devices. 


the latest 
games, floppies often seem inad¬ 
equately small; it’s not uncommon for 
a game to take up 10 disks and a large 
application like Windows for the PC 
needs over 20. 

The construction of the 3 1/2 
inch floppy disk, standard on the 
Amiga, is based on a thin ‘cookie’ of 
flexible, non-woven polyester, often 
mylar, coated in an epoxy resin which 
contains magnetic material. This is 
encased in a rigid plastic cover with a 
sliding metal hatch that protects the 
disk from damage while it’s not in a 
drive. 

A disk normally has eighty con¬ 
centric circular tracks on both sides 
which are each split into eleven sec¬ 
tors which hold 512 bytes each, mak¬ 
ing a total of 2 sides x 80 tracks x 11 
sectors x 512 bytes = 880 Kbytes, 


If computers consume digital data then 
the floppy disk is a snack, you can 
survive on them but you’ll need a lot to 
keep you going. Computers are get¬ 
ting greedier too; in the old days when 
word-processing and number storing 
were the main applications of a com¬ 
puter an 880K disk seemed like a hefty 
amount of space, but now with the kind 
of graphics and sound incorporated in 


though some newer drives can fit 
more on. 

Information is recorded 
onto the disk by means of a 
small electro-magnet in the 
read/write head of the drive 
which magnetises a given point 
on the track in a northerly or 
southerly direction represent¬ 
ing a 0 oral. Though, in fact, 
the track is normally coded 
with extra 0s and 1 s as well 
which tell the read/write 
head where it is. 

The floppy disk 
drive has two read/write 
heads, one for each side of the disk, 
which are both mounted on the same 
transport mechanism. On each side of 
the r/w heads are smaller erase heads 
which erase the edges of the informa¬ 
tion as it is put down on the track, 
trimming it so that it’s less likely to 


S ince the very first ever 
‘home’computer, the 
Altair DIY electronic 
computer kit came out 
in 1975 with its punched ticker- 
tape data storage, home compu¬ 
ter users have used a gamut of 
different devices for storing their 
precious digital data. 

These have ranged from the 
C64-style dreaded audio-cassette 
recorders to floptical disks and more 
recently video tape recorders and 
CD drives. With the latest multimedia 
software incorporating megabyte-guz¬ 
zling video and sound clips, data stor¬ 
age capacity is at a premium: fortu¬ 
nately faster and bigger devices are 
constantly being created, typically dou¬ 
bling in capacity each twelve months 
with the cost per megabyte roughly 
halving every year. So what exactly 
are the different devices on offer and 
how do they work? We opened up 
some of the data storage technology 
currently on the market to let you see. 


Floppy Disks 


Floppies at the Airport 

Taking floppy disks through airport security, do you risk 
them in the x-ray machine, or should you take them 
through by hand? In fact, floppy disks should be fine in 
the x-ray machine, unlike photographic film, because their 
magnetic coating is not significantly sensitive to x-rays, 
indeed they should be extra safe there because the 
machine is magnetically shielded. Floppies are sensitive 
to the magnetic field in the metal detector however and 
could be damaged if you take them through . 



AUI • JULY 1994 





































AUI User Port 


Floppies are cheap, robust and 
easy to use, but for modern applica¬ 
tions they’re often just too small. 
Floptical disk drives stretch the format 
to a current norm of around 20Mb, but 
even this seems measly compared to 
the 600Mb of a CD or the gigabytes 
plus of big hard drive or magneto¬ 
optical cartridge. 

Hard Disks 

— 

Hard disks were the forerun- 
ners of floppies, though now |M 
most Amiga users start off with 
floppies and graduate up to a ! 
hard drive. The construction of the 
hard disk is similar to a floppy ex- ^ 
cept for the rigidity of the disk made 
from aluminium and the way that usu¬ 
ally several disks are stacked on the 
same spindle in one drive, with a read/ 
write head for each side of each ‘plat¬ 
ter’. The hard disks also rotate at about 
ten times the speed of a floppy - over 
3500 rpm - and the information is 
much more closely packed which is 
why hard disks are so much faster 


A floptical drive - 21Mb on a floppy. 

than a floppy and also why the drives 
are much more sensitive to distur¬ 
bance. 

This is the equivalent of 
a iumbo iet flying along 
at the speed of sound 
an inch off the ground. 

The gap between the head 
and the surface of the hard disk, for 
instance, can be as little as 1/10 of a 
millionth of an inch. Scaled up, this is 
the equivalent of a jumbo jet flying 
along at the speed of sound an inch off 
the ground. 

Hard disk drive capacities 
range from about 20Mb up to several 
gigabytes and are a proven, quick and 


FACTOID 


Inside a hard drive exposing the 
top platter with its head positioned 
fractions of a millimeter above it 


hard disk cartridges go some way to 
solving this problem. 


Removable 
Hard Disks 




‘The hardest drive 
around for the A500 
Gulp, lovely monster. 


There are two main kinds of remov¬ 
able hard disk systems: the SyQuest 
drive and the Bernoulli drive. The 
SyQuest system uses a rigid hard disk 
like a normal hard disk drive, only 
encased in a special removable car¬ 
tridge. Cartridges come in 5 1/4 or 3 1/ 
2 inch formats and can store upto 
several hundred megabytes. The car¬ 
tridges are as delicate as hard disks 
while in a drive, but once removed can 
be easily transported or sent by post. 

Bernoulli drives go some way 
towards a more robust hard disk car- 


reasonably reliable type of storage 
device. They are not always very ro¬ 
bust though and can cause great dis¬ 
tress when they crash. They’re also 
not very portable, though removable 


tridge system by taking advantage of 
the so-called Bernoulli effect. Bernoulli 
‘hard’ disks are actually flexible. As 
the disk spins the air flowing past the 
read/write head creates an area of 


low-pressure under the head which 
sucks the part of the disk below it very 
close. 

if 


interrupted and the 
disk automatically 
immediately falls 
awav from the 
read/write head. 


JULY 1994 * AUI 


47 


































































AUI User Port 


The Bernouli 
Effect 


T he mathematician Daniel Bernoulli was a Swiss who ob¬ 
served and documented the so-called Bernoulli Effect 
over two centuries ago. He noticed that when air or water 
flow rapidly over an object, they exert less pressure on it 
as they pass by. So, for instance, a ping-pong ball will stay 
hobbling in mid-air on an upwards jet of air (or water), seemingly 
defying gravity. The slower moving air on the outskirts of the jet 
exerts more pressure on the ball than the fast moving air in the 
centre, so the ball tends to stay on top of the central fast moving 
stream. Likewise the topside of a plane’s wing is curved so air 
rushes past it faster than the underside, so that the pressure under 
the wing is more than the pressure on top and the wing is forced 
upwards. 


If the drive is jolted the air-flow 
is interrupted and the disk automati¬ 
cally immediately falls away from the 
read/write head. This means that the 
likelihood of damage to either disk or 
head is greatly reduced and Bernoulli 


drives are consequently considered 
more robust and efficient than 
SyQuest’s, though more expensive. A 
single Bernoulli cartridge typically holds 
150Mb of data. 


Despite super-fast 
spooling mechanisms, it 
took several seconds 
or even minutes to locate 
pieces of information. 


Optical Drives 


There are three kinds of optical disk 
devices available at the moment: mag¬ 
neto-optical drives, CD drives and 
WORM CD drives. Magneto-optical 
drives rely on a special coating on the 
disk whose magnetic polarisation can 
be detected and altered when required 
with a laser in the drive. The double¬ 
sided magneto-optical disks are en¬ 
cased in removable cartridges which 
can hold upto over a 
gigabyte of data. 


Compact Disk; 


Compact discs are usually made from 
plastic, often poly-carbonate (the stuff 
from which they make bullet-proof 



glass), coated in aluminium with a thin 
layer of transparent protective lacquer 
on top. Binary information is stored on 
the aluminium as microscopic indented 
‘pits’ for noughts or raised ‘lands’ for 
ones: over 2 billion pits and lands are 
contained on one CD arranged in a 
dense spiral which, if stretched out, 
would be over 3 miles long. 

CDs are read by a laser, usu¬ 
ally a gallium-arsenide one because 
its low wavelength means it can be 
focussed very accurately. It can be up 
to several millimetres away from the 


CDs are actually 
created or mastered 
bv taking information 
from a magnetic tape 
or disk and using a 
high-aualitv laser to 
photo-engrave a 
‘clean’ disc. 


MAG N 


□ 


How 

does that 
work? 


The first electro-magnetic storage device was the wire- 
recorder which was used to record sound. A steel wire 
moved from one spool to another past an electro¬ 
magnet: sound into a microphone caused a current in 
the electro-magnet which magnetised the wire. When 
played back the same process happened in reverse: 
the magnetised wire caused a current to flow through 
the electro-magnet which could be put through an 
amplifier and heard as sound. 

These wire-recorders were developed in Hit¬ 
ler’s Germany during the 30’s and 40’s, but were 
unreliable since the wire was fragile and frequently 
snapped. Then the idea occurred to the engineers of 
using paper tape coated with a powder containing iron- 
oxide instead of wire and with this idea they built the first 
tape-recorder. 

Eventually plastic tape was substituted for pa¬ 
per and the iron oxide powder was replaced with 
sophisticated nickel or cobalt based magnetic com¬ 
pounds. In the 60’s Philips produced the original 
now-familiar audio-cassette in its own novel 
self-contained plastic container which 
was much more robust and cheaper 
than previous reel-to-reel spools and 
opened up sound recording to the 




general public. Early electronic computers used huge reel- 
to-reel spools of magnetic tape to record digital information. 
Despite super-fast spooling mechanisms, it took several 
seconds or even minutes to locate pieces of information. To 
speed up access times drum-storage was developed which 
stored information on a spinning magnetically coated drum, 
read and written to by a head that could move up and down 
on the drum. 

To speed access still further often several heads 
would be connected to the same drum. The area covered by 
each drum was known as a cylinder, a term that persists to 
describe the equivalent area on a disk. 

Huge fifteen-inch wide multiple hard disks were the 
next development in the quest for bigger and faster memory 
storage, mounted on a central spindle. These, albeit on a 
smaller scale, are principally the same as the modern hard 
disk drive. 

The removable hard-disk was introduced in the 
sixties to aid portability and the 5 1/4 inch floppy disk 
followed in the late seventies, aided by IBM’s decision to 
incorporate a 5 1/4 inch floppy drive in their PC. 

In the early eighties the more robust 31/2 inch floppy 
in its protective plastic case started to take over and in the 
late eighties became the standard floppy disk format. 

In the last few years the hard disk has been devel- 





¥ ATTRACT 


48 


AUI • JULY 1994 













































surface of the disk. The laser beam is 
focussed by a lens to a tiny point a 
millionth of a millimetre wide, near the 
wavelength of the light itself. The beam 
reflects off the surface of the aluminium 
and back up into a light-sensor: lands 
reflect more light back into the light¬ 
sensor than pits so the electric signal 
from the light-sensor represents the 
Os and Is encoded on the surface of 
the CD. 

CDs are actually created or 
mastered by taking information from a 
magnetic tape or disk and using a 
high-quality laser to photo-engrave a 
‘clean’ disc. This disk is then devel¬ 
oped a bit like a photograph and the 
result is the master disc. This is used 
to create delicate glass mouldings from 
which copies of the master CD can be 
mass-produced. 

A WORM or ‘Write-Once- 
Read-Many times’ CD drive is a cut- 
down version of a CD-master cutter, 
which can now be bought for under 
£4000. It produces a characteristic 
one-off gold-coloured disc which can 
then be used as a normal CD-ROM. 


"AUI User Port 





oped further incorporating laser-aided tracking - the floptical disk - and a 
hybrid of magnetic and optical disk, the magneto-optical disk has also been 
produced. With the current focus of development on light as a communica¬ 
tions medium rather than electricity though, optical devices promise more for 
the future than magnetic technology. 



WORMs are useful for record¬ 
ing information that needs to be stored 
only once or twice, when archiving 
data, for instance, or for making test- 
pressings, but it takes up to several 
hours to produce one gold disc so for 
mass-production you really have to 
use professional pressing plant ma¬ 
chinery which then produce silver col¬ 
oured discs. 

Non-disk 
_ Storage _ 

There are several data storage devices 
which do not use a disk format, from 
tape-streamers to flash-cards. 
Tape-based devices work in a 
similar way to a standard audio 
tape-recorders, only recording 
information as binary north or 
south magnetic charges rather 
than analogue, continuously vary¬ 
ing magnetisation. Flashcards 
are a form of permanent RAM, 
that is RAM chips which maintain 
their internal binary electric 
charges without a power supply. 
Flashcards of several megabytes 
are likely to become commer¬ 
cially available for the Amiga 1200 
and 600 in PCMCIA format in the 
near future. 


fer to phone directory enquiries rather 
than look a number up in the phone 
book and the operators themselves 
are often working from home access¬ 
ing information from a central store 
via a high-speed digital ISDN phone 
line. 

With the right software it is 
already possible to search the whole 
of the world-wide Internet for a given 
file and access it within minutes. If the 
trend towards easier and faster re¬ 
mote access goes on you might only 
need your own permanent data stor¬ 
age devices for those really personal 
bits of information and video-clips (you 


OWL 


_ 



‘Mastering a CD in a dust-free lab ' 


The Future 

With the development of multimedia 
on a roll at the moment, the demand 
for bigger and faster data storage for 
broadcast quality video and super- 
high quality sound looks likely to grow. 
In the longer term though, that is more 
than a few years, as communications 
networks improve it seems likely that 
information might not need always to 
be stored in the same place where it is 
being used. Already many people pre¬ 


know, those ones), the rest of the time 
you might just be able to plug into and 
use public domain data stores over 
the phone or cable line. 

If data storage capacity goes 
on doubling every year and halving its 
price in the same period, logically, we 
should soon have virtually unlimited 
capacity at almost no cost. Amazing 
things have happened in computing but 
miracles of that kind are not quite so lik¬ 
ely to occur, even in data storage. AUI 


JULY 1994 • AUI 


49 






















■W/.V.V.V.V 

W.V.V,VA'.V 




OUT 


Have to re-wire 
vour hi-fi every 
time you use your 
Amiga’s sound? 
Got a silent 
monitor? Gary 
Fenton has the 
solution. 


G etting good sound out from 
your Amiga is just as 
important as remembering 
to buy AUI every month. I’ve 
got my Amiga linked up to my hi-fi 
using its AUX input, but some people 
have the hassle of swapping leads 
around when they load a program 
which really needs to heard, like a 
game for instance. 

An ideal solution is to buy a 
dedicated pair of speakers and an 
amplifier just for the Amiga. This could 
be an expensive solution but the Mul¬ 
timedia speakers from Golden Image 
are the cheapest stereo speakers I’ve 
come across. Because they have a 
built-in amplifier and come with a mains 
power supply you’re ready to rock and 
roll as soon as you’ve unpacked them. 
Well, almost. 

The Amiga, like most sensible 
audio equipment, has two phono out¬ 
puts for the sound but the cable sup¬ 
plied with the speakers has a mini jack 
(Walkman type) plug at one end. Bah! 

I can tell this package was put together 
for PCs which use tacky mini jack 
connecters for sound! So it’s down to 
Tandys to spend a couple of quid on 
the right cable. 

On the good side, each speaker 


is only 18cm tall so they hardly take up 
too much valuable space. What about 
the sound quality? Well, you know if 
you were to turn off the bass on the 
average hi-fi and put large fluffy pillows 
in front of each speaker... that’s what 


these speakers sound like! What do 
you expect for £30? 

In fairness, the quality is just 
slightly better than that of the sound 
from a 1084/5 monitor, but it doesn’t 
have the full range of which even my 


' *'* : * V-1 

* a e p # « p $ * © «? » # # # * * * * *£ 


VOLUME 


OFF 


ON 


MAX 


I'll never work out how to use the controls! 


Hmm, not bad 
looking for the price. 


14" Sony TV is capable. However, if 
you needapairof compact standalone 
stereo speakers which cost no more 
than a computer game, then these 
speakers fit the bill perfectly. The 
Ratings sum it up quite nicely. AUI 


RATINGS 


Golden Image 
Stereo Speakers 


FEATURES 

60% 

PERFORMANCE 

53% 

LOOKS 

82% 

VALUE 

90% 


Overall Rating 70% 


INFO 


Price: £29.95 
Contact: 

Golden Image 
Unit 12A 

Millmead Business Centre 
Millmead Road 
London 
N17 9QU 

Tel: 081 365 1102 


50 


AUI • JULY 1994 













































IIOGBQDK] 


400 


LPI200 


PCL5 LASER PRINTER 




Mb 

RAM 




"TWDPI ^RAM wPPM 

A4 TEXT/A5 GRAPHICS @ 400dpi • A4 GRAPHICS @ 300dpi. A 2Mb RAM UPGRADE IS REQUIRED TO PRINT A FULL A4 PAGE OF GRAPHICS AT 400dpi 

HP LASERJET III™ COMPATIBLE • FLASH ROM UPGRADEABLE! 


Ricoh, have used their expertise to produce a ‘first’ in laser printers, the 
LP1200 with FLASH ROM. HP LaserJet III ™ compatible, the LP1200 
employs industry proven laser technology which, unlike LED printers, uses 
a laser light source to produce the most accurate and intense printed 
images at a range of print resolutions up to 400dpi. A fast efficient 
processor and engine, plus a straight paper path design allows printing 
at a full 6 pages per minute. The 2Mb RAM version prints a full A4 page 
of text or graphics at 300dpi. Using standard resident fonts and the 
alternate controller firmware supplied, it can also print an A4 page of 
text or A5 page of graphics at 400dpi. Using the Windows driver 
supplied, it can print an A4 page of text at 400dpi from 
Windows 3.1, or using the Amiga driver, an 
A4 page of text at 400dpi. 


FREE! 


SHOWN WITH 
UNIVERSAL FEEDER 
TOP TRAY (OPTIONAL EXTRA) 


A 42io*V 


The 4Mb RAM version can print a 
full A4 page of graphics at 400 dpi and makes 
full use of the LP1200’s 400 dpi printing capabilities, such as 
using Microsoft Windows fonts. Unique additional standard 
features include FLASH ROM ‘future proof’ technology and 
LAYOUT - a powerful document description language. The 
LP1200’s unique internal FLASH ROM, which holds the printer 
controller firmware, can easily be updated as new developments in 
technology occur. This protects the investment you make in buying 
a Ricoh LP1200. Other manufacturers would require you to buy a 
new printer! Internal FLASH ROM and industry standard FLASH 
ROM PCMCIA cards can also be used to permanently store fonts, 
macros, graphics and extra emulations, 
competition, the LP1200 includes LAYOUT, 
a powerful and intuitive document 
description language as standard. This 
offers unique opportunities to develop 
custom made printing systems. Forms and 
document templates can be designed 
complete with logos and stored 
electronically in the LP1200’s FLASH ROM, 
alleviating the need for pre-printed forms! 

The LP1200 comes with a 100 sheet A4 
paper tray as standard. An optional 
universal feeder automatically feeds up to 
150 sheets of paper (up to 169gsm), 15 
envelopes, transparencies and labels. 


CONSUMABLES + ACCESSORIES 



UNBEATABLE 

VALUE 


THE AWARD 
WINNING RICOH 
LP1200 LASER 

PREVIOUS PRICE 



VAT 


NEW LOW PRICE 


£499 

+ VAT = £586.33 LAS 5200 


LP1200 WITH 
SINGLE BIN AND 


2 Mb 
RAM 


FREE DELIVERY 






LASER PRINTER AWARDS 


What to Buy 
for business 


\ -BEST BUY" DECEMBER 1992 


PRODUCT PRODUCT PRICE 

CODE DESCRIPTION EXC VAT 

CAB 7500 Cable for PC/ST/Amiga . £8.47 

KIT 5200 Laser Starter Kit inc Cable. £12.50 

LAA 5238 Universal Feeder (2nd Tray). £85.00 

LAA 5262 2mu RAM Module .. £85.00 

LAA 5210 Developer/Toner Cartridge. £65.00 

LAA 5225 OPC Cartridge (Drum) . £89.00 

LAA 5312 A4 Paper Tray (100 Sheets). £35.00 

FAX 1200 Ricoh Fax/Modem Software/Firmware £120.00 
MOD 7199 Pace Microlin FX Fax/Data Modem.. £149.00 

LAA 5279 Ricoh Flash ROM Card (0.5**,). £49.00 

LAA 5288 Ricoh Flash RAM Card (1 Mb). £199.00 

All Prices are Exc VAT - CALL FOR A FULL PRICE LIST 

•Note: A4 paper tray is already included in the printer price. More A4 
trays can be purchased to feed different coloured stationery. 



r RICOH 

400dpi 

LP1200 

BROTHER 

300dpi 

HL-6V 

HP 

300dpi 
LASERJET 4L 

CANON 

300dpi 

LBP-41 

EPSON " 

300dpi 

EPL-5000 

( FEATURES 

List price 

£1195 

£639 

£639 

£639 

£749 

Average street price 

£499 

£479 

£479 

£489 

£449 

Maximum resolution in dots per inch 

400x400 

300x300 

300x300 

300x300 

300x300 

Windows 3.1 driver ® 400 dpi 

YES 





Amiga driver @ 400dpi available 

YES 





Print speed 

6ppm 

6ppm 

4ppm 

4ppm 

6ppm 

Straight paper path for all media 

YES 





PCL 5 printer command language 

YES 

YES 

YES 

YES 


Resolution improvement/enhancement 

YES 

YES 

YES 

YES 


Standard RAM 

2Mb 

1Mb 

1Mb 

1Mb 

0.5Mb 

Full A4 pajje graphics @ 300dpi with standard RAM 

YES 

YES 

YES 



Full A4 page text @ 400dpi with standard RAM 

YES 





Warm up time 

<45 secs 

<90 secs 

<34 secs 

<15 secs 

<35 secs 

First page of text output 

<15 secs 

<20 secs 

<34 secs 

<34 secs 

<19 secs 

Layout document description language included 

YES 





Flash ROM 

YES 





Flash ROM upgradeable firmware 

YES 





PCMCIA card slot 

YES 





Scaleable resident fonts - in HP LJ III emulation 

8 

13 

26 

8 


Resident bit-mapped fonts 

14 

18 


7 

7 

AGFA Intellifont scaleable font technology 

YES 


YES 

YES 


HP LaserJet III emulation Included 

YES 

YES 

YES 

YES 


EPSON FX emulation included 

YES 

YES 



YES 

IBM ProPrinter emulation included 

YES 

YES 




Standard tray capacity 

100 

150 

100 

100 

150 

Cost per copy** 

1.65p 

1.80p 

2.40p 

2.10p 

1.95p 

Min-max paper weight in gsm 

60-157 

60-105 

60-105 

64-105 

60-157 

Able to print on 0HP film 

YES 

YES 

YES 

YES 

YES 

Able to print on 157gsm card (manual feed) 

YES 




yes . 

Printing - noise level 

<48dB(A) 

<50dB(A) 

<48dB(A) 

<46dB(A) 

<45dB . 

L PC independent plain paper fax option 

YES 




~J 


• "As quoted by manufacturers - April '94 


E&0E All Trademarks are acknowledged 


OCTOBER ’92 

• 6 PAGES PER MINUTE 

• 2Mb RAM AS STANDARD 

Upgrade to 4Mb RAM only £85+vat - see left 

• PCL5 - INC HP-GL/2 With Scalable Fonts and Vector Graphics 

• SHARP EDGED PRINTING 

Ricoh FIAL (Fine Image ALgorithm) enhances resolution 

• 400dpi RESOLUTION 

(Default res. - 300dpi. Will address 200, 240 & 400dpi) 

• UNIQUE FLASH ROM 

For controller upgrade and storage 

• PCMCIA CARD SLOT (PCMCIA/JEIDA Compatible) 

For programmable FLASH ROM cards 

• EXPANSION BOARD SLOT 

For improved connectivity eg. Coax/Twinax, PC-LAN etc 

• LAYOUT Document description language 

• SERIAL + PARALLEL PORTS 

• OPTIONAL FAX UPGRADE See accessories left 

• 1 YEAR ON-SITE WARRANTY 
OR UP TO 12,000 COPIES 

Next working day response 


SVLIC^ l 



THE SILICA SERVICE 


Before you decide when 
to buy your new laser 
_. printer, we suggest you 
Cp/ think very carefully about 
^ *4r WHERE you buy it. Consider 
TO what it will be like a few months 
after you have made your 
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081-309 1111 


1-4 The Mews, Hatherley Road, Sidcup, Kent, DA14 4DX 

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E&OE • Advertised prices and spec fications may change • Please return the coupon for the latest information. 



































































































































AUI User Port 




Michael Rumbelow explains 
how the mysterious bit plavs 
such an all-important role in 
the Amiga. 


C omputer makers like to 
boast about the number 
of bits their latest ma¬ 
chines have, even to the 
point where it is now common to 
poke fun at 8-bit machines and laugh 
as you pull out your 64-bit monster 
and plonkiton the table. (‘That should 
keep you happy, dear”) 

Non-boffin observers often 
frankly don’t follow what all this 
fuss is about; a 32-bit machine 
sounds as if it should be twice as 
good as 16-bit, but is it? What are 
these bits for? And what does it 
mean when people talk about 24- 
bit images and 16-bit sound? 

To understand the nature of 
bits it is first necessary to allow 
your mind to chew through and 
sever its tether with everyday nor¬ 
mal reality and fly through a hole in 
the torn fabric of space-time con¬ 


sciousness into the mysterious 
bleeping universe of binary digits 
and integrated electronic circuits. 

In a nutshell, computer chips 
deal strictly in binary numbers, i.e. 
zeros and ones, which they under¬ 
stand as tiny electronic currents 
along their pins, (the wire ‘legs’ 
that come out of the sides of the 
futuristic black insect-like oblong 
chips which cling to the circuit- 
board and connect the chips to each 
other and the rest of the computer). 
A current along a pin means T, no 


current means ‘O’. A bit is just a 
binary digit (Binary digIT) i.e. a ‘0’ 
or a T. So in the same way that 346, 
say, is a 3-digit decimal number, so 
‘8-bit’ refers to an eight-digit binary 
number like ‘00101110’ or 
‘11111101’ for instance. 

On an 8-bit chip, then, there 
should be at least eight pins to handle 
eight zeros and ones at a time. In 
practice, though, there are many more 
than 8 pins on an 8-bit chip, so what are 
all the other pins doing? Also some 
chips like the Amiga 500’s are called 
16/32 bit - what does this mean? To get 
to the bottom of this it helps to know a 
little about how the main chip in a 
computer, the CPU (Central Process¬ 
ing Unit), actually works. 

68,000 Chips 

A CPU chip is based on a network of 
electrical switches. In the olden days 
computers were built out ofbig valve 
or electro-mechanical relay 
switches, but then in 1947 the 
transistor (TRANsfer-reSISTOR) 
switch was invented, followed by 
the integrated circuit imprinted on 
a single chip and ever since then 
scientists have been squeezing more 
and more transistors onto tiny wa¬ 
fers of silicon. A chip in Motorola’s 
68000 range - at the heart of every 
Amiga - for instance, contains over 
68,000 transistors and this network 
of transistors does the lion’s share 
of all the Amiga’s processing. Inci¬ 
dentally both Intel’s new chip, the 
Pentium and the new Apple-IBM 
consortium PowerPC chip, which 
the next Amiga is rumoured to 
be going to use, contain nearly 
3 million transistors each 
(gulp!). 

So how can a collection 
of simple transistors do arith¬ 
metic and all the other operations 
of a computer? It is the way transis¬ 


tors are linked together that makes 
them powerful. One transistor is a 
just a switch, a hundred transistors 
linked together can perform some 
basic binary arithmetic and a net¬ 
work of a hundred thousand is a 
fully fledged processor chip. 

The basic unit of the compu¬ 
ter then is the transistor, which is 
just a simple electronically control¬ 
led switch which turns a current in 
an electric wire on or off. It func¬ 
tions very like a light switch for 
example, only instead of your fin¬ 
ger there is another electric current 
turning the switch on or off. There 
is a main wire going in, a main wire 
going out and a third input wire 
which turns the transistor switch 
on or off. 

Typically, a transistor lets 
current flow in the main electric 
wire until its switch is ‘flicked’ by a 
current along the input wire, which 


24-bi 

Colour perception is one of 
the bodily functions most 
mysterious to scientists. For a 
start it is very hard to test 
objectively - you end up with 
the old chestnut of what you 
see as orange could look green 
to me, etc, etc. It could be that 
human colour perception has 
become more refined over 
time, or at least our descrip¬ 
tion of it has, judging from the 
fact that ancient literature 
contains a smaller range of 
colours than we are used to. 
Ancient Roman poems, for in¬ 
stance, sometimes liken the 
colour of the sea to the colour 
of wine. (Was it really that 
dark?) 

Even in one eye colour 
perception changes depend¬ 
ing if you are looking straight 
at something or to the side of 
it, or what colours something 
is next to - a deep blue night 
sky looks even bluer with a 


Map of the Motorola 68040 chip found inside the 
Amiga 4000 and the latest Apple Macs. 



84 


AUI • JULY 1994 



























41/1 User Port 




Colour 

yellow moon shining in it. So 
colour quality is hard to define 
scientifically. 

Despite this, people have 
carried out several experiments 
on human guinea pigs in 
laboratories to test colour per¬ 
ception and have come up with 
the rather tenuous scientific 
‘fact’ that on average the hu¬ 
man eye can distinguish 
between 180 shades of colour. 

With computers, colours 
are normally displayed on a 
monitor which builds a picture 
from pixels; the pixels them¬ 
selves are made from three 
components - dots of the pri¬ 
mary colours red, green and 
blue, which in different mix¬ 
tures can imitate any colour in 
the spectrum. 

So all the computer needs 
to do is send the monitor 
brightness values for each of 
the red, green and blue 
components of each pixel. To 


then turns current in the main wire 
off. As soon as the input current to 
the transistor stops, current in the 
main wire is allowed to flow again. 
The magic of the computer comes 
from the idea that the current in 
the ‘main wire’ coming out of one 
transistor can become the ‘input 
current’ of another, or several oth¬ 
ers, so turning on one transistor 
can lead to other ones being turned 
off, which can lead to other ones 
being turned on and so on. In this 
way complex logical switching net¬ 
works can be built up from 
transistors. It’s possible, for 
instance, to make a network of 
transistors which has sixteen wires 
going in and sixteen coming out. 
Depending which wires current is 
applied to at one end and the design 
of the network, transistors through¬ 
out the network would turn on and 
off and a specific pattern of wires 


The CPU board has lots of bits to 
handle lots of bits. 


would end up carrying current at 
the other end. Binary numbers can 
be expressed as patterns of on or off 
electrical currents and it turns out 
that switching networks can per¬ 
form certain kinds of basic 
operations on binary inputs. Tak¬ 
ing the binary numbers ‘0101’ and 
‘0011’ for instance, as an input pat¬ 
tern on eight input wires, a 
transistor switching network might 


be logically designed to produce the 
pattern of currents ‘00001000’ as 
output. This is the equivalent of 
adding the two inputs together (the 
binary numbers for 5 and 3) and 
outputting the sum (8). These kinds 
of simple logical operations - add¬ 
ing, subtracting, comparing binary 
numbers and the like - are what 
computer chips are ‘doing’ all the 
time while a program is running. 


Instructions 


The instructions which tell the chip 
which kind of operation to perform 
- ‘add the next two numbers’ or 
‘compare the next two numbers and 
output the higher one’- also come 
coded as binary numbers, which 
throw the right set of transistor 
switches in the chip so it will per¬ 
form addition or whatever. A CPU 
chip normally understands several 
hundred different coded instruc¬ 
tions, which might sound a lot but 
in fact most of them are very basic 
and very similar. There might be 
up to ten technically slightly differ¬ 
ent instructions for adding two 
binary values together, for instance, 
or several individual instructions 
to test the value of a single bit, each 
with a subtle technical nuance. 

For some instructions, like 
‘add together the next two binary 
numbers and output the answer’, 
the CPU needs somewhere to store 
the first number temporarily while 
it reads the second; these internal 
memory stores are called registers. 


describe 180 shades of one of 
these colours takes an eight bit 
binary number (which can 
have up to 256 different val¬ 
ues; with 7 bits you could only 
go up to 128). So for 180 shades 
of each of the colours Red, 
Green and Blue takes three 
times 8-bits, which makes 24- 
bits. This is why 24-bit images 
are sometimes described as 
‘true colour’. 

24-bit images are only 
really true-ish colour; they may 
be able to describe over 180 
shades of pure red, pure blue 
or pure green but for other 
colours like a green with a hint 
of blue for instance, which 
might be 4 parts green to every 
part blue, a computer will not 
be able to describe 180 shades 
using only 24-bits. Cinematic 
film, for example, which has 
colour quality estimated at 32- 
bit, is distinctly better. 


Addresses 

The chip also has to retrieve any 
data it is going to process itself, 
from memory. It does this by send¬ 
ing the memory ‘address’ of the 
data it needs (another binary 
number) along with a ‘read’ signal 
to the RAM chips, which send back 
the right piece of data. Similarly to 
write to memory the chip sends the 
address and the data plus a ‘write’ 
signal to the RAM chips, which 
store the data. 

So the chip needs an extra 
set of pins to handle all this address 
processing, since each piece of data 
input or output is associated with 
an address. The set of wires which 
carries all this data and address 
information between the central 
processing chip and the RAM chips, 
as well as to and from the serial 
ports and other devices, is called 
the bus. 

The ‘speed’ of a chip then is 
determined by how fast it can read 
and write data to memory exter¬ 
nally via the bus and how fast it can 
process data and address informa¬ 
tion internally. The external input 
and output and the internal chip 
processing have to be coordinated 
so that the transistors do the right 
operation on the right data at the 
right time. 

The Amiga 1200^ 
graphics chip can draw 
over a million dots 
per second. 

Inside a chip thousands of 
transistors are switching on and off 
all the time and due to slight vari¬ 
ations in manufacture the time 
taken for each transistor to switch 
isn’t always exactly the same. Left 
to themselves the transistors would 
soon get out of sync not only with 
each other but with the bus, so they 
are kept in time by a ‘system clock’ 
which sends out a regular 
metronomic electronic signal like 
the slave-master’s drum on ancient 
rowing boats. 


JULY 1994 • AUI W 


15 





































AUI User Port 


For every clock cycle the chip 
n read or write one chunk of in¬ 
flation to the bus, the chip 
msistors can all switch once and 
instruction can proceed by one 
ip. The faster the system clock 
ries then, the more times per 
:ond the transistors switch, the 
ire chunks of data are read and 
•itten to the bus and the more 
structions per second the chip 
n perform. So the system clock 
eed is one measure of the inter- 
i\ speed of a computer. 

The Amiga 

it how does all this relate to the 
niga 500’s Motorola 68000 chip? 
le 68000 has 16 pins to handle 
ita and 24 pins to handle ad- 
•esses, while its fifteen internal 
ores - its registers - eight for data 
id seven for addresses, can hold 
Lbit numbers. This is why it is 
ascribed as a 16/32 bit machine. It 
in only read and write 16-bits at a 
me externally, via a 16-bit bus, 
it internally it can process infor- 
ation in 32-bit chunks. If it needs 
i output a 32-bit piece of data it 
as to split it into two 16-bit blocks. 

It’s not what you've 
got so much as what 
you do with jt and 
lacklustre software 
will look bad 
on any machine. 


several minutes of sampled music - 
or these days, real live video. 

Clock Speed 

The system clock on the 68000 cy¬ 
cles at 8 MHz or 8 million times a 
second and the fastest instruction, 
to move information from one reg¬ 
ister to another, takes 4 clock cycles 
so in a second it can perform two 
million of these, while the slowest 



The chip and the floppy 
one stores bits, one 
interprets them. 


Digital Vibrations 

Everything is vibrations, as they say, and music is no exception. 
Sound vibrations can be sensed as changes in air pressure which 
move the lightly suspended magnet in a microphone; this causes 
an ‘electro-motive force’ which makes electrons flow in a coil of 
wire proportionally to how fast and in which direction the magnet 
is moving. This electric current is measured every l/44000th of a 
second and given a value between 0 and 65536, which is then 
converted into a sixteen-bit binary number (between 
0000000000000000 and 1111111111111111). These values can be held ii l 
RAM, on floppy or hard disk, on a CD, or any other store of binary 
information. 

Rlay It Again 

To play the music again the process is reversed: the binary 
numbers are converted every l/44000th of a second into varying 
positive and negative electric current, which when boosted by an 
amplifier causes the magnet in a speaker to move which causes 
changes in air pressure - heard as sound. 

The more bits are used to measure the flow of current, the 
more precisely the speed of the microphone magnet can be 
defined. 8-bit sampling can only describe 256 different speeds of 
the speaker magnet, whereas 16 bits can describe over 65000 and 
the difference can be heard as a much smoother and clearer 
sound. Above 16-bit most people don’t notice much improvement 
as other factors like the quality of the amp, the speakers and the 
leads become more significant limitations on sound quality. Also 
multiples of 2 are convenient for processing chips, so 16 is the next 
logical step up from 8-bit. 



A picture of a whole computer, instead of a bit of one. This A4000/040 is one of the fastest processors around. 


The 24-bit address capabil- 
y means that it can read and write 
ata to up to about 16.7 million (2 to 
le power 24) different places in 
AM (if you ever have that much, 
le A500 starts off with only 512K). 
his can be very useful for storing 
irge quantities of data like the 
rightnesses of all the pixels on a 
3ry hi-res screen, for instance, or 


instruction, division of two 32-bit 
numbers, takes 170 clock cycles so 
it can only do 50,000 or so of these 
per second. 

The Amiga 1200, on the 
other hand, uses the Motorola 68020 
processor chip, or in Europe the 
68EC020 chip. This chip has 32 
pins to handle data, 24 pins to han¬ 
dle addresses, 32-bit internal 


registers, a 32-bit bus and a clock 
speed of 14MHz, so is significantly 
quicker than the 68000-based A500 
in nearly all these departments. 
The A3000 and more particularly 
the 68040 4000s can run far faster, 
accelerating up to 59mHz. 

To make things more com¬ 
plicated computers often include 
other processing chips to help out 


the main CPU, called co-processors 
or ‘coppers’ for short. These usually 
specialise in one particular job like 
number-crunching or graphics 
processing and so use fewer instruc¬ 
tions than the CPU; for this reason 
they are, in special configuarations, 
sometimes deleniated as RISC (Re¬ 
duced Instruction Set Chip) 
processors. 


Meet the Girls 

The Amiga 1200 has three special¬ 
ised chips - Alice, Lisa and Paula - 
which concentrate on video, graph¬ 
ics and sound processing, as well as 
an optional Motorola 68881/68882 
Floating Point Unit chip (FPU) that 
specialises in number-crunching. 
These specialist coppers are not 
only very fast at what they do - the 
Amiga 1200’s graphics chip can 
draw over a million dots per second 
- but they also relieve the CPU of a 
great deal of repetitive processing 
allowing it more time to deal with 
other instructions. 

When manufacturers want 
to impress people with how power¬ 
ful their machines are then they 
tend to use these criteria: the number 
of bits the CPU and the other spe¬ 
cialist chips can handle, the clock 
speed and how much RAM the com¬ 
puter has on board. The number of 
bits that the bus can handle is also 
frequently quoted, as are the inter¬ 
face capabilities with other pieces of 
hardware, especially now that in¬ 
ter-machine communications and 
compatibility are becoming more im¬ 
portant. As always though, it’s not 
what you’ve got so much as what you 
do with it and lacklustre software 
will look bad on any machine, while 
on the other hand beautiful and 
powerful effects can sometimes be 
achieved very simply. Your eyes and 
ears will tell you more than the 
technical spec. AUI 


86 


AUI • JULY 1994 













































Post Your Order Now 


GET HOOKED! 


ON 


Being Amiga users, most of you are already 
familiar with "Fred Fish" floppy disk library 
series. You know the "Fish Disks" have 
continually led the way with the very latest 
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Introducing FreshFish, FrozenFish, and 
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FreshFish ™ 


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Published every 6 to 8 weeks, this CD con¬ 
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FrozenFish TM [Subscription Avalibale] 


Published every 6 months, this CD will in¬ 
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All material willbe in archived from only. 


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This two disk CD set will contain the entire 
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Don't wait to reel in the best software you 
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For more information or to place an order, write or call: 


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AUI User Fort 


“In Cvbersnace. 
no-one cares how 
loud von scream.” 


Alex Goldsmith takes vou on a 
whistle-stop tour of the 
exploding Internet 



I f you haven’t heard of the Internet 
yet, you might have spent the last 
six months in an isolation tank. 
Known to its denizens as the “Net”, 
it’s probably the closest thing so far to 
the Global Village, a world community 
of computer users swapping e-mail, 
graphics, programs and databases on 
every imaginable subject. Welcome to 
the mother of all bulletin boards or 
Cyberspace as the bandwaggon-jump- 
ing international press likes to call it. 

Internet’s growing at a stag¬ 
gering rate: some 20 million users in 
the world so far with a new network 
signing up every 10 minutes. The vol¬ 
ume of digital traffic on some parts of 
the Net is growing at a mind-blowing 
341,634 % per annum or more imagi¬ 
nably an estimated 1,000,000 more 
users a month. 

To get on, all you need is your 
computer, a modem and some comms 
software. You have to register with a 
service provider and many of these will 
also help you set up. The cost of regis¬ 
tration can be as low as £12.50, with a 
flat rate monthly charge of £10. Some 
kind of reference material will help you 
get your bearings. “The Whole Internet 
User’s Guide” by Ed Krol (O’Reilly and 
Associates; £18.50) is the bible, al¬ 
though ‘The Internet for Dummies” 
(IDG Books; £17.99) is also handy. 
Both books, and also “The Net Guide” 
by John Perry Barlow will help you bust 
through the jargon jungle into easy 
access cyberspace - sorry, the trendy 
language is catching. 

Once you’re online, you can 
dial into servers all over the globe and 
sample their wares, all for the cost of a 
local call. If you’re not interested in 
what you find, a few keystrokes will 
have you surfing to another server to 
see what’s going on. 

The Internet sprang to life in 
the late 1960s, out of US military plans 
for a communications network that 
would survive a nuclear attack. Mes¬ 
sages were divided into packets and 
sent along different routes before be¬ 
ing reassembled for delivery to the 
recipient. Knock out one route and the 
messages will find another way of get¬ 
ting there. The whole idea was that a 
communications network with no cen¬ 
tre could not be nuked away. It works 
damn well, too: Saddam Hussein used 
the technology in the Gulf War and 
allied bombing did very little to dent it. 


Pretty soon, the universities were 
linking in to share programming access 
to supercomputers. As more and more 
institutions in more and more countries 
joined up, academics started using the 
net to swap programs, publish their re¬ 
search and - hey, while they’re online - 
gossip, tell jokes, catch up with friends 
and generally chew the fat. 

And when they left their col¬ 
leges and institutions, those same aca¬ 
demics and students began to demand 
private access to the Net. They missed 
their virtual communities! Today, with 
over 20 million people hooked up, the 
Net spans the whole globe with the 
northernmost link in Thule, Greenland 
and the southernmost link in the 
Amundsen-Scott base at the South 


Pole. In fact, e-mail is the only public 
way to get a message to the South 
Pole. Hello penguins, anybody there? 

_ Variety _ 

So, what’s available? Depending on 
your service provider (not all of them 


offer a full Internet connection), you get 
e-mail, access to files, information, soft¬ 
ware or you can join in discussion groups 
on a truly staggering variety of subjects. 

Even the most basic connec¬ 
tion offers an e-mail service, which 
means you can send messages in¬ 


stantly to practically anyone with an 
e-mail address, including the US White 
House. Yes, President Bill Clinton is 
waiting to hear from you! Beyond that 
there’s a mass of academic and public 
service information, available through a 
variety of methods. One of the best 


ways of sampling this is through “Go¬ 
pher” (as in “Go fer if), a type of soft¬ 
ware that runs on many of the computer 
servers that you can access through 
the Net. Once you’ve dialled into a 
server which runs Gopher, the latter 
presents you with a menu of options 


which can run into several screenfulls. 

Each item will either take you 
to some hard information of your choice 
- some text, a database, a library cata¬ 
logue - or to another gopher server in 
some other part of the world, offering 
yet another dazzling array of choices. 



Logging onto CIX (Compulink Information Exchange). 


AUI • JULY 1994 













































- 


You can consult the CIA World Fact 
Book, search the Bible or the complete 
works of Shakespeare. If it sounds 
bewildering, don’t worry - you can al¬ 
ways backtrack your way out of the 
maze and start again. 

Most fun are the Gophers dedi¬ 
cated to cyberculture in its myriad forms. 
Check out the WELL’S Gopher. The 
WELL (it stands for Whole Earth 
‘Lectronic Link) is probably one of the 
best known virtual communities: a bul¬ 
letin board in Sausalito, California with 
some 8,000 subscribers. The WELL 
Gopher is their contribution to the Net 
and through it you can access articles 
from cult magazines such as Wired and 
Mondo 2000, as well as the writings of 
cybergurus like Bruce Sterling, William 
Gibson and Howard Rheingold. If you 
like what you see but can’t be bothered 


to read it all online, you can mail yourself 
the text and download at your leisure. 

Alternatively, there’s FTP (File 
Transfer Protocol) which allows you to 
download text or software from dedi¬ 
cated servers. This is less user-friendly 
than Gopher but there’s so much infor¬ 
mation that it’s worth mastering. Whole 
books are available through FTP. 

One of the major problems that 
Internet is causing is that of control. 
We live in what the the Netters call INL 
- In Real Life. And IRL we are control¬ 
led in all sorts of ways from being 
compelled, sensibly, to agree on which 
side of the road to drive to paying taxes 
and behaving, at least in public, ac¬ 
cording to the conventional norms of 
the society in which we live. However, 
the Internetworld, Cyberspace, is prov¬ 
ing virtually, hmm, perhaps that’s the 


AUI User Port 


-\ 

**Coping in Cyberspace. 
Follow the rules and you 
won’t get flamed** 


Cyberspace is the virtual world cre¬ 
ated by the network and its users. 
But just because it isn’t tangible, 
doesn’t mean it isn’t real. If you’re an 
innocent and you don’t follow the 
Netiquette, you can get into very 
heavy waters. 

Most Net users report a men¬ 
tal transformation when they log on. 
It’s due to the strange combination 
of intimacy and distance that results 
from interacting with others through 
the medium of a computer. The ano¬ 
nymity; the absence of physical 
cues; the emotional investment of 
committing your thoughts to text; all 
of these combine to make the expe¬ 
rience unique. Many people take 
the liberating step of adopting a new 
virtual identity. As they say, “In 
Cypberspace, no one cares how loud 
you scream.” 

And that’s where the dan¬ 
gers lie. People get carried away. 
They forget it’s more difficult to con¬ 
vey humour or irony in written text. 
“Flaming” is a kind of virtual tongue- 
lashing that can affect anyone who 
says the wrong thing at the wrong 
time. People can be hounded out of 
cyberspace by flamers. If you’ve 
invested emotional capital in your 
virtual identity, the experience can 
be traumatic. 

Hence, the proliferation of 
“emoticons” and acronyms to con¬ 
vey meanings that would get lost or 
misunderstood in plain text. The 
most common are:-) to denote a 

s_ 


joke, ;-) to denote irony, and :-(for 
displeasure. (If you don’t see why, 
try turning the page by 90 degrees). 
Others include ROFL (Rolls On Floor 
Laughing) and - a good one for 
flamers, this - FOAD (Fuck Off And 
Die). Use capitals sparingly, how¬ 
ever; it’s like screaming. It may not 
be true, as is claimed, “In 
Cypberspace, no one cares how 
loud you scream.” 

Another tip is to look up the 
FAQs file (Frequently Asked Ques¬ 
tions) when you first log in to a dis¬ 
cussion. That way you’ll avoid the 
virtual equivalent of blundering into a 
room full of people and asking a 
series of inane questions. 

RememberalsothattheNet 
is essentially a non-commercial 
space (although quite how long that 
will last, nobody knows). Avoid us¬ 
ing it for blatantly commercial pur¬ 
poses. Try to live up to the anar¬ 
chic, tolerant, freedom-fighting 
spirit of the Net. Though a U.S. 
lawyer who recently, and against 
all Net practice put out an adver¬ 
tisement, received 35,000 replies 
before he was “flamed”. The proc¬ 
ess included a “mail bomb” - 8 mil¬ 
lion characters or so of absolute 
gibberish designed to jam up his 
whole system. 

So, follow Netiquette, walk 
before you run, master the jargon 
and you’ll soon find yourself shoot¬ 
ing the breeze like a veteran internaut. 
Happy Netsurfing! 

-j 


Attached to the Univercity of Virginia via a Gopher. 

nternet Uopher intornation Client vl.lll 


Root gopher server: ecosvs.drdr.virginia.edu 

— >1 1. Welcone to the EcoGopher Project at the University of Virginia!/ 

2. The II,Va. Division of Recoverable and Disposable Resources. 

3. The University of Virginia Environnental Prograns/ 

4. Connect to the U.Va, Resource Tracking System!/ 

5. Organization: Environnental Groups/ 

6. Action: Prograns, Calendars and Things To Do/ 

7. Connunication: Electronic Hailing List Mailboxes/ 

8. Education: The EcoGopher Environnental Library/ 

9. Exploration: Gopher-accessible services/ 

18. EcoChat! - login: ecochat <TEL> 

11. Katie - Keyword-search of All Text In EcoGopher <?> 

12 . :-) :-) :-5 :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-). 

13. EcoLynx - access to the World Wide Web of Hyper-text! <TEL> 


Press 0 for Help, El to Quit, H to go up a nenu Page: 1/1 


CIX 14:14 00:01 


Getting the information you want is simple using Gophers. 

IBnternet Gopher Intornation Client jjTTTM 


Look fit fill 58 Things You Can Do 

—>_ 1. Appreciate all life-forns rather than nerely the 'useful' ones! 

2, Ask for recycled paper at stationers and printers 

3, Ask local companies to reduce their use and production of toxics 

4, Avoid 'novophillia' - desiring a new thing when the old suffices! 

5, Avoid air conditioning as nucn as possible 

6, Avoid buying wood fron the tropical rainforests 

7, Avoid disposables; use products that are reliable and repairable 

8, Avoid inpulse buying; read labels and research products you buy 

9, Be aware of boycotts of ecologically harnful conpanies 

18. Borrow or rent things you seldon use, nend and naintain your own 

11. Bring your own shopping bags to the narket; reused paper or cloth ... 

12. Buy beverages in returnable containers; avoid disposables 

13. Buy products in bulk with the least anount of packaging 

14. Celebrate seasonal changes, solstices, and equinoxes! 

15. Conpost! - only send to the landfill what cannot be used again 

16. Contact your local elected representative & speak your nind! 

17. Dont buy endangered aninals or the products nade fron then 

18. Dont buy endangered plants or the products nade fron then 

Press id for Help, El to Quit, B to go up a nenu Page: 1/3 


CIX 14:15 00:02 


JULY 1994 • AUI 


89 



























AUI User Port 


wrong word, almost, impossible to con¬ 
trol. Hence the recent bewildered out¬ 
cry by confused MPs and others about 
pornography on bulletin boards. The 
Networks certainly do provide oppor¬ 
tunities for total freedom for even the 
most extreme ideas - though it’s diffi¬ 
cult to imagine them being put into 
practice over the telephone line. There 
are dozens of obviously sex-orien¬ 
tated areas with such clear titles as 
ThrobNet, WildNet even KinkNet, 
where discussions of even subjects 
like bestiality - “Happiness is a warm 
puppy”- are carried on without censor¬ 
ship. This whole development has so 
alarmed the US authorities, who still at 
least indirectly provide some of the 
funding behind the Net, that they are 
attempting to impose a “Clipper chip” 
which would, in theory allow them to 
bug into any of the present, according 
the author of The Net Guide, “utterly 
ungovernable anarchy”. As you may 
imagine, Netters accustomed to the 
unusual freedom the Net affords are 
resisting the idea. 

Usenet Groups 

With a full Net connection, you can 
also have access to any of the 5,000 or 
so online discussions known as Usenet 
Groups. These cater for every imagi¬ 
nable interest, from accountancy to 
zoology via foot fetishism and extrem¬ 
ist political propaganda. They’re or¬ 
ganised into categories: you can post 
questions and have them answered by 
experts or you can make you own 


ip> quit 

four internet session is closing doun 

Connection closed. 

Illqo internet 

Last login: Tue May 3 15:18:28 fron gonzales.coripuli 


Hello anigauser, welcone to the CIX Internet Gateway version 2.6 

lote: we log each user of IP so any conplaints will be passed on 

Type: ? for connand list. 

HELP for list of all help files. 

HELP <connand> for in depth help on a connand or 

subject. 

ip> gopher ntv.con 


CIX 

14:16 88:63 


By simply typing “Go Internet " on CIX you have access to a whole new world of information. 


contributions. You can take part in live 
discussions or you can “lurk” unob¬ 
served while others unburden them¬ 
selves. 

As the new, one million per 
month, Netters are finding out, there is 
such a huge number of opportunites 
open to them that there may be a 
radical change effected in the way we 
view communication. The 20th cen¬ 
tury has been the era of mass commu¬ 
nication that has spread ideas, expec¬ 
tations and ambitions with accelerat¬ 
ing speed across the world. The Net¬ 
works are providing the chance to re¬ 
establish individual communication but 
now with vast - and ever-growing - 
numbers of people; Cyberspace as 
Marshall McCluhan’s long-heralded 
Global Village. IRL, “Network” could 
turn out to be the most influential word 
and idea of the 21st century. AUI 


Service Providers 

1 1 • 

Here’s a brief list of service providers. Not affibf them offer 
full Internet connections, although many of them are con¬ 
stantly upgrading the kinds of services they offer. And, of 
course, many of the providers (like CompuServe, CIX, or 
GreenNet) offer their own services. The only Amiga BBS in 
the UK which offered access to the internet has closed that 
service due to cost (although we would love to be corrected 
if anyone knows of another in existence), which means the 
way to get on is now via other systems, such as CIX. 

Remember to check also whether or not they offer 
local dial-up facilities. Nothing like trunk route call charges 
to spoil your fun. 

s_ 


« Demon » 

e-mail-> internet@demon.net 

voice-> 081 349 0063 

fax-> 081 349 0309 

« CompuServe » 

e-mail-> MT@csi.compuserve.com 

voice-> 0800 289 378 

« CIX - CompuLink Information Exchange » 

e-mail-> cixadmin@cix.compulink.co.uk 

voice-> 081 390 8446 

« The Direct Connection » 

e-mail-> helpdesk@dircon.co.uk 

voice-> 081 317 0100 

« GreenNet» 

e-mail-> support@gn.apc.org 

voice-> 071 608 3040 


THE AMIGA GAME PAD OFFER 


Get the amazing Gamepad from 
Gravis and receive the great Amiga 
Five-O Gamehookfree! -for a 
superb offer price only from AUI. 
Simply fill in this form. 


P.O. BOX 10, SUNDERLAND SR4 6SN 



Send Me The Amiga Game Pad and 
Amiga Five-O-Book. 


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.Post Code. 

Telephone No: (in case of queries). 

I have enclosed my cheque payable to A.I.M Limited for £32.95 
which includes £3.00 postage and packaging or debit my 
Access □ Visa □ Credit Card (please tick) 


No. I_I_ ^^^^^^^_I_I_I_^^^_I_I 

Expiry Date./.Signature. 

Please allow 28 days delivery from receipt of order AUI/E 


90 


AUI • JULY 1994 




















































/ 

flLnsJJjyyJte 
L~S sjjjj pa ihjg 

33 Ormskirk Rd, 
Preston, Lancs, 
PR1 2QP 

Ladbroke Computing 
International are one of the 
longest established home computer dealers in 
the U.K. We have developed an extensive 
customer service policy which involves testing 
of all hardware prior to despatch to ensure that 
goods arrive in working order, offering free 
advice and support over the phone and 
keeping customers informed. Although our 
prices are not always the cheapest we do 
endeavour to offer consistently good service 
and backup. 

All prices/specifications are correct at copy 
date 13/4/94 (while stocks last), and are 
subject to change without prior notice. All 
prices include VAT but exclude delivery. 

How to Pay 

You can order by mail Cheques/Postal Orders 
made payable to Ladbroke Computing. Or give 
your credit card details over the phone. 

Delivery 

Postal delivery is available on small items 
under £40 (Normally £3, phone for details). 
Add £7 for courier delivery. Next working day 
delivery on mainland UK subject to stock (£20 
for Saturday delivery). 

Open Mon-Sat 9.30am to 5.00pm. 
Ladbroke Computing Ltd trading as Ladbroke 
Computing International. 

Fax: (0772) 561071 
Tel: 9am-5.30pm (5 Lines) 

(@772) mmm 





priv eS 



• Quantum SCSI Hard drive 

• Ultra fast 11 ms access 

• Up to 8Mb RAM on board 

SPECIAL OFFER 

170MB NO RAM 
£349 

240MB NO RAM 
£439.99 

2Mb SIMM Upgrade £54.99 

4Mb SIMM Upgrade £109.99 



• 16MHz 286 PC Emulator 

• Norton rating 15 

• Plugs into GVP II HD 

GVP PC-286 Emulator £89.00 



Star 

Star LC100 Colour £129.99 

Star LC24/100 Mono £169.00 

Star LC24/30 Colour £209.99 

• Built in 55 sheet feeder 

• 24 Pin Colour 

Starjet SJ48 Bubblejet £210.00 
Star SJ144 £369.99 


• Thermal max transfer colour 
printer 

• 144 element head 

• Glossy colour output 

• 360 dpi resolution 

Citizen 

Citizen Swift 240 Colour £250.00 


Citizen ABC 24 pin Col. £179.99 
Hewlett Packard 

HP Deskjet 520 £279.99 

HP Deskjet 550 Colour £429.99 
HP Deskjet 310 £239.99 

Lasers 

Ricoh LP1200 £699.00 

Panasonic KX-P4400 

Laser £499.99 

Seikosha OP104 £479.99 


Add £3 for Centronics cable 
and £7 for next working day 
courier delivery. 



Ergonomically designed Trak Ball. 
320Dpi resolution, 2 microswitched 
buttons. The Legend Trak Ball is 
very easy to use. Unlike normal 
Trak Balls the LEGEND is operated 
with the thumb freeing the fingers to 
click buttons. 

ONLY £29.99 



• Video processor provides real 
time software control of brightness, 
contrast, saturation, hue, 
sharpness, filtering, gain etc. 

• Audio processor with two audio 

inputs, software switchable or 
mixable, with software control of 
Volume, Bass and Treble effects. 
G-Lock Genlock £284.00 

Rendale 8802 Genlock £149.99 



Plugs into PCMCIA slot 
Fully external, doesn’t affect 
warranty 

250Mb Overdrive £349.99 

Phone for higher capacities. 



Amiga A600 Wild, Weird, Wicked 
Pack £194.99 

Includes A600, Pushover, Grand 
Prix, Putty, Dpaint III. 

A1200 Race & Chase £279.99 

Includes A1200 with 2Mb RAM. 
Trolls and Nigel Mansell 
A1200 Desktop Dynamite £329.99 
Includes A1200 with 2Mb RAM, 
Digita Wordworth, Digita print 
manager, Deluxe Paint IV, Dennis, 
Oscar 

Amiga CD32 £279.99 

2Mb RAM. Dual Speed CD ROM. 
Multi session, plays music CD’s, 
256000 colours on screen, includes 
2 games Oscar and Diggers. 

Amiga 4000 030 £999.00 

Includes A4000, 030 processor, 

2Mb Chip RAM, 80Mb Hard drive. 




• 290dpi resolution 

• 2 Microswitched buttons 

• Opto/Mechanical mechanism 

• Switchable between Amiga/ST 

• Direct Mouse Replacement 

Eklipse Mouse 

£11.99 



• 880K formatted capacity 

• Double sided, Double density 

• Through port 

Amitek Drive £59.00 

A500/600 Internal Drives Phone 




Samsung Cl 3352X £179.99 

14" SCART input TV with remote 
control and on screen display 
(requires SCART cable for high 
quality display). 

Microvitec 1438 £289.99 

The Microvitec 1438 is a multisync 
monitor compatible with 
A500/A600/A1200/A4000. 
Microvitech 1440 £399.99 

The Microvitec 1440 is a multisync 
monitor compatible with the A1200. 
Includes setup memory for different 


resolutions. 

Colour SVGA Monitor £229.99 

High quality Colour SVGA Monitor 
.28 dot pitch. 

A1200 VGA adaptor £11.99 

Falcon VGA Adaptor £9.99 

Philips SCART to Amiga £9.99 
8833 MKII to Amiga £9.99 



• 16MHz 32 bit 68030 Central 
Processor, 16MHz Blitter, 

32MHz 56001 Digital Signal 
Processor 

• 1.44Mb 3.5" Floppy, up to 14Mb 
RAM. Displays 65536 colours 
from 262144 palette 

• 8 Channel, 16 bit, high quality 
Stereo sound sampling 

FALCON 1 Mb No HD £499.00 
FALCON 4Mb No HD £699.00 
FALCON 4Mb 64Mb HD £799.00 
FALCON 4Mb 127Mb HD £899.00 
FALCON 4Mb 209Mb HD £999.00 
Falcon Screen Blaster £89.00 



A500 512K upgrade 

£16.99 


A500+ 1Mb upgrade 

£24.99 

A600 1Mb no clock 

£34.99 

Plugs straight into A600 trap door 
compatible with A600, A600HD 



!erat° r 


• 40MHz 68030 accelerator 

• Makes your Amiga 1200 run 
over 7 times quicker. 

• Allows up to 32Mb RAM 

• Optional FPU 


A1230/4Mb/No FPU £429.00 
A1230/4Mb/68882 FPU £529.00 



Our Service department can repair 
Amiga's in minimum time at competitive 
rates. We can arrange for courier pickup 
and return delivery of your machine to 
ensure it's safety. We even have a 
same day service which will ensure your 
machine is given priority and subject to 
fault, completed the same day. We offer 
a Quotation service for £15 for which we 
will examine your machine and report 
back with an exact price for repair. If 
you do not wish to go ahead with the 
repairs then just pay the £15. However if 
you do go ahead then the charge is 
included in the minimum charge. Please 
note: The minimum charge covers 
labour, parts are extra. 


Quotation service £15.00 

Min repair charge £35.25 

Courier Pickup £11.00 

Courier Return £7.00 

Same day service £15.00 

















AUI User Port 


Patrick Howiett continues to 
blow apart the mysteries of 
this excellent machine. 


B uying an A1200 or 4000 
doesn’t just get you the 
latest and bestest Amiga, 
it also comes with Work- 
Dench 3, which blows away the earlier 
versions and can make Mac and PC 
users a little green too. 

Although the standard Work¬ 
bench configuration is perfectly 
reasonable, the ability to customize so 
many of its features really makes it 


take up too much space. Clean fonts 
such as the System font look good for 
icons but depending on your 
screenmode preferences (see later), 
it’s generally a case of tiying a few 
selections out. Also, this is the only 
text which can be given any colour 
from the palette, so try different col¬ 
ours as well. Clicking on ‘use’ will 
allow you to view your font selections 
without altering the permanent setup 




x-p-l-o-d-i-n-g 


stand out as a GUI which has come of 
age. Customizing can be done in sev¬ 
eral ways, there is of course the 
preferences drawer, which contains 
many programs to modify parts of 
Workbench and this initselfcan trans¬ 
form its look and feel’. Another way of 
improving the Workbench is to get 
hold of some of the many PD and 
Shareware utilities which can add so 
much to the Workbench. These can 
range from simple cosmetic altera¬ 
tions to a complete revamp of the 
WIMP interface. 

Starting with Workbench’s 
own preferences drawer we can begin 
to customize general aspects of the 
system to suit our personal taste and 
preference. Although many of the 
changes we can 
make are simply 
in appearance, it 
can be definitely 
worthwhile 
implementing 
them, especially 
if Workbench is 


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Here we can see Applcons, iconified programs 
plus the usual draws and icons. 


whereas ‘save’ will save the current 
selections for future use. These two 
options are common to most of the 
preferences programs and allow for 
easy experimentation. 

Next we come to the screen 
font. This font is used throughout 
Workbench for window names, pull 
down menus, requesters and so on. 
Some fonts will have the effect of 
increasing the size of the windows 
name bars and gadgets etc. So a bit 
more experimenting may be needed 
here. As you can see from the picture, 
12 point Granite adds a bit more to the 
size of the drag bars and looks a lot 
more agreeable than Topaz. 

The system default font is the 
final category of font that we can 
choose. Depend¬ 
ing on how you 
use the machine 
this may or may 
not appear very 
often. It’s used 
for window text 
which doesn’t 


Iconified program 
Program Icons 






£0 « 


used for long periods. It’s amazing 
the effect that a more attractive set 
of fonts has on the look of the sys¬ 
tem and, as we shall see later, we can 
eventually change the appearance out 
of all recognition. 

Fonts 

So, starting with the fonts prefer¬ 
ences program, which is found in the 
system preferences drawer, we find 
that there are 3 separate font selec¬ 
tions we can make. Icon font is the 
font that will be used for all Work¬ 
bench icon names i.e the text that 
appears under the icon. 

As a general guide keep to 10 
or 12 point sizes since larger fonts will 


relate to Workbench (if that makes 
sense!), so, a shell will use this font as 
will a window displaying text using 
the ‘show by name’ option. 

Colours 

The Palette 
preferences pro¬ 
gram is where 
all the colours 
thatWorkbench 
uses can be 
altered. This 
program use¬ 
fully indicates 
which colours are used for menus and 
windows etc and provides a little test 
facility. However, it’s down to per- 



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Display Hod* 

PAL:High R*s 

PAL:High Res Laced 

PAL:Lou R*s 

PAL:Lou Rts Lactd 

PM.:t«p*r-Hi?h Res 

PAL:Super-Hioh Res Lactd 


Mode Properties 


Midth: |UM 1 Default 
Heijht: |M2 | _v/J Default 

Colors: 16 M _| 

AutoScrolt: j£| 


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Mlninui Size : Ml * 

Maxim* Size : 16368 X 

Maxim* Colors: 2S6 

Interlaced 
Requires CCS 
Supports 9tnleck 
Dragfable 
SIHz, 13.68kHz 


Save | 


Use | 



A standard hires Workbench screen transformed 
using big fonts and loud colours into something 
that playschool might use. 


sonal taste this one and as we shall 
see later there are better ways of 
brightening up the Workbench. Simi¬ 
larly, the pointer preferences gives 
Jpl full control over 
the look of the 
pointer but does 
not do much else 
so we shall skip 
this for now. 
The screen 
mode prefer¬ 
ences provides 
options for the Workbench screen dis¬ 
play. Productivity and Super hires 
modes are very pleasant to work with 


SuperHires 1280x521 Workbench screen. Needs 
a multisync to make it useable and this screen 
could do with larger fonts. 

but a dual or multisync monitor is 
necessary to get the best from these 
modes. Also, extra RAM will come in 
very handy since these screens are 
quite memory hungry. In fact, many 
applications inherit the Workbench 
screen properties so again extra re¬ 
sources should be considered essential. 
The standard hi res screen mode is 
fine for most purposes though. 

Rounding off preferences are 
WBPattem and Sound. The former 
allows a pattern or an IFF image to be 


92 


AUI • JULY 1994 



































































































AUI User Port 




displayed as a background to the 
Workbench, the windows or both. 
Beware of eating lots of memory if an 
IFF is selected though. The latter 
defines what Workbench does when a 
system "beep’ is encountered, which 
generally indicates an error of 
somekind. The "beep’ can flash the 
screen, make a pathetic beep sound or 
play an IFF sample (your Amiga can 
literally scream at you!!). 

There are several preferences 
programs which we haven’t discussed 
but these are specific to things like 
printers and I/O, they give a great 


bench functions plus the ability to 
customize further the look and feel of 
the WIMP interface. 

Makes full use of the extra 
colours allowed under Workbench 3. 

2. MagicMenus - Not as com¬ 
prehensive as MUI but a very nice 
utility which is fully customizable. 
Offers easier access to menus from 
anywhere on the screen, a single click 
will display and hold menus for a 
preset time which reduces the number 
of clicks required to manipulate win¬ 
dows. Loads more features including 
3D look menus, auto pop-to-front 


Amiga Workbench 607,512 graphics mem Pother mem 


degree of control over devices and 
ports but are obviously specific to the 
type of peripheral being used. Details 
can be found in the Workbench 
manual. 

Enhancements 

Moving on to third party enhance¬ 
ments for Work¬ 
bench we 

enter a much 
wider field. A 
quick look round 
the office here at 
AUI shows that 
everybody has 
their own favourites. There’s pysch- 
edelic Dave (all those Magic-Menus!) 
Taylor withhis lurid Workbenchback- 
ground and icon minefield competing 
with the restful Gideon ‘screen 
blanker’ Overhead! But seriously 
though, here’s a list of our favourite 
PD and Shareware Workbench add¬ 
ons: 

1. Magic User Interface - 
MUI is an extensive intuition en¬ 
hancement utility that is veiy well 
supported by other PD developers. 

It offers lots of extra Work- 


A new feature of Workbench 3. This 256 colour 
picture eats into memory but there's a lovely set 
of fractals here too! 


windows etc. 

3. WBVerlauf - 
metic enhance¬ 
ment which adds 
agraduatedback- 
ground to the 


A nice cos- 


an accelerator for your 1200. 

6. Clocks - A generic title this 
one. The standard clock is OK but 
several PD clock programs exist which 
are a lot better, depending on what 
you need. You do need abatteiy backed 
clock though, which unfortunately 
isn’t standard on the 1200. 

7. Screenblankers - Another 
generic title. Quite a variety are avail¬ 
able ranging from small variations on 
the standard vector blanker to sophis¬ 
ticated blankers with alarge selection 
of different blanking effects. 

8. Icon Editors - The supplied 
icon editor is a definite improvement 
over the earlier, and dire, Workbench 
IconEdit but check out some of the PD 
editors as well. Customising icons is 
easily done, but a fair amount of care 
and skill will be needed to avoid turn¬ 
ing the Workbench into something 
resembling childsplay. 

9. Readers, viewers and Di¬ 
rectory utilities - It’s very worthwhile 
having one or two of these types of 
program sitting on Workbench. If you 
need to quickly read a file or look at a 
picture then these utilities will al¬ 
ways be on hand. Our favourites are 
ViewTek and Directory Opus, but 
there are lots more similar programs 
in the PD. Incidentally, if you want a 
program’s icon to always be on the 
Workbench screen, simply dragitfrom 
wherever it lives onto Workbench and 
with the icon still highlighted, select 
leave out’ from the icons pull down 
menu. It will then 
appear every time 
Workbench is 
booted up. 


Tools Daemon, another Workbench add-on which 
modifies the Workbench menu bar to include extra 
Hems. 


MagicMenus is a Workbench enhancement that allows 
access to menu items from anywhere on the screen. 


The font preferences program gives complete 
control over what fonts the Workbench will use. 


Workbench dis¬ 
play. It simply 
requires a start 
and end colour and 
then performs a smooth graduated 
change between them. 

4. ToolsDaemon - This and a 
similar utility, Add-tools, allows ap¬ 
plications and commands to be called 
from the Tools’ menu list. It’s also 
possible to add your own entries to the 
Workbench menu bar, providing a 
great deal of flexibility. 

5. Turbolayers - This retains 
the contents of a window when it’s 
being moved, a lot better than the 
default wire frame. Larger windows 
can be slightly jerky if you don’t have 


10. Fin¬ 
ally, all the other 
weird and won¬ 
derful utilities 
which really come down to personal 
preference. Remember love-hearts 
from SuperDisk 27? A silly little 
hack maybe, but there really is some¬ 


thing for everybody out there, from 
beginners to hardened Amiga 
fanatics. 


Public Domain 

Most of the decent PD utilities around 
are now only compatible with Work¬ 
bench 2 or 3. The use of standard 
libraries for things like requesters 
means that these utilities are becom¬ 
ing highly polished pieces of software, 
belying their existence in the public 
domain. Many programs, commer¬ 
cial and PD, make use of Applcons, 
onto which other (file) icons can be 
dropped for processing. Another ex¬ 
tra feature of Workbench 2 and 3 is 
theabilityforaprogramtobeiconified, 
where it remains in memory, ready to 
pop-up when the icon is double clicked. 
This can happen when the user quits 
the program or leaves the program 
multitasking- an icon representing a 
currently running program is some¬ 
times known as a deposit! 

With Workbench 3 and to 
some extent Workbench 2, Commo¬ 
dore have produced a GUI which does 
the Amiga proud. That’s not to say 
that previous versions were bad, it’s 
just that they lacked so much of the 
functionality present in the newer 
versions. It’s fair to say that a lot of 
bugs have been ironed out as well, 
reducing the number of GURUs of 
which 1.3 users will be only too aware. 

The downside with Work¬ 
bench 3 and a 
vanilla 1200 is 
that a hard 
drive is almost 
essential. Con¬ 
tinual disk 
swapping using 
a floppy based 
1200 is a real pain, but as drive 
prices come down, most 1200 us¬ 
ers will look to a hard drive as an 
essential add-on. With the system 
on a hard drive the possibilities 
are much wider, and the power 
and flexibility of Workbench comes 
into its own. AUI 




WIMP - The original computing 
term for Windows type 
interfaces - coined by Zerox it 
stands for Windows, Icons, 
Mouse, Pointer. 

GUI - A standard computing 
term meaning Graphical User 
Interface. 

Applies to any WIMP 
environment, used by the Amiga 
but also Apple Macs, Windows 
or PCs etc. 


PD - Public Domain. Programs 
in the Public Domain are freely 
distributable, completely free for 
everyone to use and spread. 

Shareware - Again, freely 
distributable software but this 
time the authors request a small 
payment if the program is used. 
Payment of the fee often buys a 
registered version of the 
program, which usually will be 
the complete program. 


JULY 1994 • AUI 


93 

























































































































AUI User Port 


The AUI A to Z 
of the Amiga 



Continuing to dive into the depths of computer 
jargon and coming up with an easily 
accessible smile- here is the third part of 
AUTs Guide to the Amiga- 



If you have access to a Modem 
you have access to the world. 



Libraries 

Libraries - suites of functions that pro¬ 
grams can use. Most programs run¬ 
ning on the Amiga will essentially be 
strings of library calls with their own 
bits glueing the whole thing together. 
The most essential libraries are resi¬ 
dent in the KickStart ROM, with others 
in the libs: directory of the Workbench/ 
boot disk. Programmers are not, of 
course, restricted to the standard set 
of Commodore libraries but can also 
write their own. The Amiga makes use 
of SHARED libraries. A library can be 
called by many DIFFERENT programs, 
without the need to include that code. 
Use of libraries and other conventions 
have the advantage over direct ac¬ 
cess to the hardware (known as “hit¬ 
ting the metal”) in that should the hard¬ 
ware change, all that is needed is a 
rewrite of the library and the old soft¬ 
ware should still work. 

_ Lisa _ 

Lisa-the AGA replacements Denise. 
Lisa operates faster and can address 
memory 32 bits at a time, effectively 
increasing its bandwidth, which allows 
lots of lovely new features, such as 
use of HAM and the new HAM8 mode 
in any resolution, memory permitting. 

_ Locale _ 

Locale - a new (as of Workbench 2.1/ 
3) standard for writing software avail¬ 
able in several languages. All the text 
for the gadgets and menus can be 
written for several languages and the 
program just has to check the locale 
preferences to load the appropriate 
set. Locale also covers information 
like time zones, and what particular 
currency symbols, date representa¬ 
tion etc. should be used. 



Megabyte 

Megabyte - Meg or MB - 1024 Kilo¬ 
bytes. Use to be regarded as a huge 
amount of memory, especially by us¬ 
ers of ZX81’s. These days Amigas 
come with at least two. 

Memory 

Rrotection 

Memory Protection - a feature some 
operating system that attempts to pre¬ 
vent programs from writing all over 
memory used by other programs, es¬ 
sential in a multi-tasking environment. 
Due to the Amigas OS and its use of 
shared libraries, memory protection 
has not been a viable option for Com¬ 
modore and developers. Instead, good 
use of the CBM developer tools, 
Mungwall and Enforcer are required to 
avoid any memory clash problems. 

_ Menus _ 

Menus - those lists of functions that 
appear when you hold down the right 
mouse button. Most Amiga programs 
use them to receive instructions from 
the user. 



Selecting commands is easy using the 
Amiga's pull down menus. 


Microsoft 

Microsoft - Think of all the monster 
technology corporations in science fic¬ 
tion (eg Cyberdyne Systems, Tyrell 
Corporation, IBM), combine it with the 
political tactics of Orwell’s Party and 
the NSDAP and put the archetypal 
computer nerd in charge and you’ve 
got Microsoft. (Only joking, Bill - we 
love you really). Microsoft’s only ‘con¬ 
tribution’ to the Amiga has been 
AmigaBasic (do I detect a conspiracy 
here?) which is not universally re¬ 
nowned for it’s speed and power be¬ 
cause it hasn’t got any. 

_MIDI_ 

MIDI - Musical Instrument Digital In¬ 
terface - a standard for connecting 
electronic musical instruments, 
sequencers computers etc together. 
Allows you to control sound hardware 
superior to that of the Amiga. The 
Atari ST has always had MIDI built in 
as standard, which is why it has made 
so many in roads into the music indus¬ 
try. The only Amiga to have one as 
standard was the CDTV. You can pick 
them up for £80 or so these days. 

_MIWU_ 

MMU - another chip to augment the 
CPU - this controls access to memory, 
enabling features like memory protec¬ 
tion and virtual memory. The Amiga 
doesn’t normally use them so they are 
not much use, but applications such 
as Enforcer and the UNIX OS require 
an MMU. Both the 68030 and 68040 
(not EC models) have built in MMU’s. 


_Modem_ 

Modem - MODulator DEModulator - a 
little (these days) gizmo which attaches 
to your serial port and to a phone line, 
thus giving you access to other simi¬ 
larly equipped computers. These days 
many modems also allow you to send 
and receive faxes too. 

Motorola 

Motorola 68000/020/030/040 - a chip 
from the 68000 series is at the heart of 
every Amiga. The original 68000, 
used in the A1000, A2000, A500, A600 
and CDTV is 16-bit chip running at a 
tad under 8Mhz. The 68020 is a faster, 
fully 32-bit chip, the 68030 the same 
butfaster, adding an integral MMU and 
the 68040 incorporates a built in FPU. 
There are also ‘economy’ versions of 
these chips, popular in cheaper accel¬ 
erators, which lack extras like the MMU 
and FPU. The 68EC020 used in the 
A1200 doesn’t have a full 32bit ad¬ 
dress bus - which is why you can’t take 
the A1200 past 8megs of FAST RAM 
without fitting an accelerator. Motorola’s 
Power PC next? 

_MPEG_ 

MPEG - Moving Picture Experts Group 
- a development from JPEG; this time 
the group/standard is concerned with 
simultaneous audio and video. The 
compression algorithms are so good 
that it is possible to fit 70 minutes of 
broadcast quality video with CD qual¬ 
ity sound on to one CD. The CD32’s 


94 


AUI • JULY 1994 






























































































AUI I/ser Port 



FMV add on utilizes MPEG. As hap¬ 
pened with audio CDs, FMV CDs will 
eventually replace the videotape. 

MSDOS 

MSDOS - Microsoft’s DOS as used by 
the IBM PC and compatibles. Not 
worth the disks it comes on, but, sadly 
the most popular operating system in 
the world. AmigaDOS is far superior; 
just compare the shell to the MSDOS 
command prompt. 


IV u Ititaski ng 

Multitasking - the ability to have more 
than one program running at a time. 
The Amiga employs pre-emptive 
multitasking, which means sharing the 
processing between programs (tasks). 
It’s the responsibility of Exec to divide 
up processor time between the vari¬ 
ous programs. 



_PCS_ 

OCS - Original Chip Set - term coined 
with the introduction of the A&A - 
referring to the original, pre-ECS Paula, 
Agnus and Denise. Still more power¬ 
ful, in some ways, than the best the PC 
and Mac can provide, even today. 



tofWwch ferns 


Systen3,i 


QuickSrab 


atozSfinal.asc 

ftodeapic.iff 

post.iff 
Public.iff 
pulldown.iff 
Rendared.jps 


Platinun Scribble? S Copyright 1988,8$ Hicro-Systens Software, Inc 
: Project: Untitled-1.doc 


The Amiga can have them running and actually working all at the same time. 


Operating 
_ System _ 

Operating System - the interface be¬ 
tween hardware and software, an op¬ 
erating system is a program, or more 
often, a group of programs that runs 
the system. The Amiga has a very 
powerful multitasking operating sys¬ 
tem - the first available on a microcom¬ 
puter and in many ways the best. 

Outline Fonts 

Outline Fonts - these differ from bitmap 
fonts in that they are descriptions of 
the shape of the font rather than the 
image - they can therefore be scaled 
without introducing jaggies. The first 
outline fonts on the Amiga I know of 
were used by Aegis Videotitler. Gold 
Disk was the first company to use the 
Agfa Compugraphic variety, which was 
probably what prompted Commodore 
to support them in Workbench 2.04. 



Parallel Rort 

Parallel Port - a port on the back of the 
Amiga which is most commonly used 
to connect printers. Referred to in 
AmigaDos as PAR:. Faster than a 
serial port because it can send 8 bits at 
a time. 

_Paula_ 

Paula - the Amiga sound chip, capable 
of reproducing 8 bitfourchannel stereo 
sound to a high standard (although not 
quite CD quality). Unchanged since 
the OCS. We should see an improve¬ 
ment with AAA. 

_PC_ 

PC - Personal Computer. The Amiga 
is a personal computer, but if you told 
the average Amiga owner that they 
had a PC or the average PC owner 
that an Amiga was a PC they would 
disagree because the term is misused 
to mean IBM PC compatible. 

PCMCIA 

PCMCIA - a standard for credit-card 
sized peripherals like memory cards 
adopted by Commodore for the A600 


and 1200. Popular among notebook 
PC’s. We’re beginning to see more 
interesting devices like modems now, 
but using them requires special driver 
software. 

The A1200s PCMCIA is type 
2 compatible, in case you were 
wondering. 

PostScr i pt 

PostScript - a computer language that 
specialises in describing printed pages. 
A PostScript file will print at the best 
resolution possible on any PostScript 
output device. Adobe launched it in 
1985, and along with Aldus Page¬ 
Maker, the Mac, and the Apple 
LaserWriter that it was built into, it 
caused the desktop publishing revolu¬ 
tion. Commodore, deciding that the 
Amiga should keep up with all the 
latest developments, released a 
PostScript printer driver. Shame we 
had to wait until 1992 for it, but there 
you go... 




■ 

pMMEiNrrs 

he 

r V" □Manual T..d □Mirror 

fSER: | | PAR; | | dUM | Q8 bit Bit-op. 

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PF! 

0 (S]Proces* Black MHTTl h>i EEWITl “ f§)BIack A White 

□ Process Yellow fTWTTI lui li WI H* Q 3 Color_ 

□ Process Magenta rntmiol FEW TT1» Q4 Color 1 

O □Process Cyan KWill IpI U WWD* QColor PostScript 

1 0» 1 1 Conc.l | 

am 

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roR . 


PPage 4.0 allows PostScript output. 


Preferences 

Preferences - originally a Workbench 
program that allowed you to set things 
like screen colours, printer drivers etc, 
split into many function specific pro¬ 
grams in Workbench 2 onwards. 

Public Domain 

Public Domain. - out of the kindness of 
their hearts, many Amiga program¬ 
mers will slave away, getting square 
eyes and little sleep, on some small 
(but often large) and usually useful 
project, only to give it away, to you, the 
public, with absolutely no charge. 
Whilst not strictly PD, shareware, 
giftware and even whiskeyware (!) are 
freely distributable but the authors ask 
that a small fee, gift or bottle of whis¬ 
key be sent if the program is used 
regularly. The Amiga has generated a 
very large and active PD scene, with 
programs ranging from small utilities 
to major applications. 

Public Screens 

Public Screens - a new screen defini¬ 
tion that appeared in Workbench2.0. 
It allows programs to easily open win¬ 
dows on a screen that another pro¬ 
gram has created. Steve Tibbet’s 
PSX is an example of a utility that 


JULY 1994 • AUI 


95 




























































AUI User Fort 


Arnor Public Screen 
□ | Pro text v6.12 0) Arnor 


59 

iBle 


Cix conference list conpiled by devansPc ix*' 

- Last sorted Wed Apr 27 13:52:54 1994$* 

-*» 

- ( o=open, c=closed )^ 

-V 

-P 

Business: enploynent, conpanies, entrepreneurs*' 

P 


o agents Conputer recruitnent agents chatter.* 1 

o audit Audit discussion area*' 

o business.club Chat About Issues Affecting Snail Businesses*' 
o buy british Buy British Goods, Invest m your own future.* 1 

o conTind For conference/theatre/product launch technicians*' 

consult Forun for snail consultancy businesses* 1 

contract Conference for all contractors, freelancers, consultants, etc* 1 

contracts Freelance contract discussion etc*» 


enterprise.aid Potential / new business trade ideas, help and support.*' 
"- p 0P S n a ii entrepreneurs (or those who would like to.be).. 


entrepreneurs For snail entrepreneurs (or those who would like to be).*' . 
epos To discuss Electronic Point Of Sale (EPOS) and related topics.*' 

_ exports Mutual help for exporters of goods and services*' 

o freelance_jobs Technology freelance work forun*' 
o honework? Mult i level narket ing.. .what's it about?*» 
ind_retai" 


...._iling A discussion on independent retailing.*' 

independent.^ A discussion about Independent Retailing.*' 

=- For b u ddi n n inventors etc. to bounce ideas off one another*' 

Chat about Mail Order Catalogues you get with the glossies.*' 


innovat ion 
innovations 
insurance 


Insurance/conputer breakdown cover/osn and nore*' 


Public screens allow you to open windows on a screen that another program has created. 


allows you to open a Public screen. 
Most modern programs either open 
public screens or give the option to 
open on one. 



QuickTime 

QuickTime - or more accurately Abys¬ 
mally Slow Time - Apple’s attempt at a 
digital video standard for the Macin¬ 
tosh. Inferior to MPEG, and when it 
comes to playback speed, an Amiga 
1200 could play an ANIM faster than a 
Mac Quadra could play a QuickTime 
movie of similar quality, so there. 



RAM - Random Access Memory - the 
memory that the computer uses to do 
all its work in. On the Amiga RAM can 
be divided into two types; CHIP RAM 
and FAST RAM 


Registered 

Developer 

Registered Developer - somebody, or 
a group of somebodies, who produce 
Amiga-related products, or simply need 
or want to know about Commodore’s 
intentions for the Amiga before the 
rest of us. As a developer you get 
access to the latest Kickstart updates 
and all the programming information 


you need if you are writing applica¬ 
tions. Plus, Commodore might let you 
in on a few secrets, if you’re lucky 
(don’t hold your breath). There are 
three levels of develeperdom, Regis¬ 
tered, Certified (don’t tell PC or Mac 
people you’re certified, they might get 
the wrong idea), and Commercial, with 
varying levels of privileges. 

Rendering 

Rendering - on a computer, rendering 
is usually taken to mean the transfor¬ 
mation of a 3 D scene stored math¬ 
ematically in the computers memory 
into a displayable 2 dimensional im¬ 
age. The most accurate form of ren¬ 
dering is Ray tracing, which mimics 
the way light rays behave in real life 
and is capable of photo realistic re¬ 
sults. 

_ RISC _ 

RISC - Reduced Instruction Set Chip/ 
Computer - a CPU which operates 
faster because it has a very small, 
simple set of instructions which run 
very fast instead of very many, more 
complicated and slower instructions 


on traditional CPUs (like the 68000). 
At the moment RISC technology is far 
ahead in terms of speed; and a future 
Amiga may well be based on this tech¬ 
nology. 

_ROM_ 

ROM - Read Only Memory - perma¬ 
nent memory that cannot be erased or 
written to - usually used to contain a 
computer’s basic operating system. 

Rom Kernal 
Manuals 

Rom Kernel Manuals - Commodore’s 
multi-volume guide to the technical 
aspects of the Amiga - essential read¬ 
ing if you intend serious Amiga pro¬ 
gramming. 



RTG - Re-Targettable Graphics - a 
stated aim for a future Amiga operat¬ 
ing system; the ability to run Amiga 
programs with screens, windows et al 
on third party graphics cards via 
device drivers. 

That’s all for this month. AUI 



96 


AUI • JULY 1994 




























AUI Constant Actors 



A beautiful sunset and a beautiful result. 


Not brilliant weather, but still breathtaking. 



Lovely on screen requesters make it easier. 


I don't like spiders, but this looks good. 


Hi-Q’s NEW 
“FRAMEMACHINE” 

“FrameMachine” is a REAL real- § 
time frame-grabber and digitizer. 

This board/software combination 
will recognize any external ana¬ 
logue video signal and convert it to ™ 
digital 24 bit format at 25 frames per 
second and store them in internal 
memory. 

This memory is housed on the 
FrameMachine board, thus avoiding 
complicated memory operations 
through the Amiga. This image data 
can then be retrieved at any time and 
played back in full 24 bit quality using 
the “Prism 24” program. 

So time-base correction of video 
sequences, real time scaling, further im¬ 
age manipulation and the placing of 
sequences in windows is made possible. 
As FrameMachine works at 50 half¬ 
frames per second, all operations can 
be carried out in real-time, providing that 
the Amiga is not multi-tasking. This 
means that it may be used as a video¬ 
mixer, mixing full frames in real-time. 


are supported, up to a 
maximum of 768 x 580 
pixels. The animation 
software makes full use 
of compression routines 
and double buffering is 
standard. On all boards, 
the Amiga imagery may 
be intermixed with the image stored in 
AVideo’s frame buffer; this means that 
all types of Amiga Animation effects in 
low or high res mode (including HAM) 
may be superimposed on the 24 bit 
image stored in the buffer. 

With the arrival of these new 
boards, HiQ want to clear some of 
their old stock from the shelves and 
are making AUI readers the following 
offer. They have approximately a 
dozen “AVideoYC” units to clear and 
these will go (at the giveaway price of 
£129) to the first customers phoning 
HiQ and mentioning “AUI”. The 
AVideoYC comes as an external box 
that plugs into the Amiga 23 pin video 
output and thus interfaces with any 
Amiga - including the A500 and A1000. 
A great offer. 


FrameMachine will run on any 
2000,3000 or 4000 series Amiga, and 
while it will work on basic machines, it 
requires a large hard drive and mega 
memory to be fully utilized. 


AVIDEO 24 
BOARDS 

The AVideo series of boards have 
been supplied by HiQ and “AVideo 24” 


is the latest in the series - being a 
daughter-board that handily fits into 
the Amiga mother board as a replace¬ 
ment for the video (Denise) chip. 

All regular Amiga resolutions 


The FrameMachine (includ¬ 
ing Prism 24 software) retails at £599 
and the AVideo 24 at £299. By the 
time you read this, “TruePaint” - a new 
alternative 24 bit paint program for 


JULY 1994* AUI 


97 
































































AUI Constant Factors 



What a view! aii brought to us by the almost any topic, anywhere in the 

Amiga ' world. Though this personal service 

is on a one-off, customized basis, 
TeleTrain have also launched a pre¬ 
digitized collections for starters and 
the initial subject categories include: 

Textures, Backgrounds, Spe¬ 
cial Effects, Snow, Desert, Nudes (very 
tasteful - the sort you can show your 
mother), Fireworks, Night Scenes, 
Pastoral Scenes, Egyptology!, Cus- 
why hasn't Venice sunk yet? tom Cars, Clouds, Sea and Underwa- 


FrameMachine, should be available 
for about £50 extra. 

Contact HiQ Limited 176 
Kenton Lane, Harrow, HA3 8SU or 
telephone 081 909 2092. 


TELETRAIN 

SUPERPIX 

For many years, TeleTrain have oper¬ 
ated an Amiga bureau for digitizing 
pictures and composing MIDI-control¬ 
led sample soundtracks. They have 
now extended this to join the growing 
number of companies offering back¬ 
ground pictures and textures for use in 
multimedia production. 

What makes TeleTrain’s ap¬ 
proach different is that they have 
joined forces with a major London- 
based picture library that supplies a 



wide range of the high quality images. 
This means that you can contact them 
with a request for specific pictures to 
be digitized from this vast source, on 



ter and there are plenty of others.. 

There are usually seven lo-res 
interlaced pictures per disk and the 
minimum order is four or more disks, 


priced at £4 per disk. There are two 
‘sampler’ disks containing images from 
various categories available for just £6 
the pair. 

This particular resolution was 
chosen as it offered a fair selection of 
good quality images per disk. 
TeleTrain thought that two 24 bit im¬ 
ages on a disk did not offer the buyer 
enough choice, whereas lower resolu¬ 
tions lacked quality. As part of their 
‘customized’ service, they will supply 
images in any format from 24 bit down 
- as requested by the customer. This 
seems an ideal approach, and though 
Amiga owners will not normally have 
access to such a wealth of images 
(copyright-free), they will probably have 
a program such as Art Department 
with which to change the resolution to 
suit their requirements. 

Examples from the disks 
showed that they were of superb qual¬ 
ity and offered pictures with far more 
impact than the ubiquitous ‘blotting- 
paper’ textures of many other image 
suppliers. Be bold and try some of the 
images such as ‘Fireworks’ or ‘Night 
Scenes’ for added effect in your pro¬ 
ductions, or if you still prefer more sub¬ 
tle background pictures, then the ‘Un¬ 
derwater’, ‘Sea’ and ‘Cloud’ series 
should suit you and are really different. 

For more information, contact 
Glyn Collins, “TeleTrain” at 6A Glyn 
Mansions, Hammersmith Road, 
London, W14 8XH or telephone 
071 602 2592. AUI 


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VERDICT 


Brr. It's a bit chilly out. Still, we're used to it, 
being Vikings. 

Worlds) and start your search for the 
missing pieces of the amulet. And let 
me tell you, this is not an easy task. As 
you progress, the story unfolds with 
each person you meet telling you just 
a little more. Who exactly is behind the 
war between the villages. They both 
think it’s the other side, a bit suspi¬ 
cious. Pop and visit the fisherman who’s 

Hello there. We didn't expect to see you. 


JULY 1994 • AUI 


HEIMDALL 2 


Core Design £34.99 1 Meg 


H eimdall 2 is the apple of Core’s 
eye at the moment. It would 
be; it’s their latest game. Into 
the Hall of Worlds is the se¬ 
quel to the excellent Heimdall and re¬ 
unites us with our hero. He spent the 
first game gaining his divinity and now 
he has to sacrifice it again. Why? 

Well, because the plot requires 
you to. Loki, the evil god, is up to his old 


but I quite liked the old system, even 
though it looked very different to the 
rest of the game (which, I guess, is why 
Core scrapped it). 

A rather 

nice aspect of the H|j 
first game was the I 
initial sub-games I 
that decided your I 
attributes, but I 


Enter the hall and 
choose your world. 


Alright there, mate? 
How's it going? 




tricks again, causing havoc. The only 
thing to stop him is an ancient amulet 
that will immobilize any god. Thing is 
(and I’m guessing here, pure conjec¬ 
ture, no hard facts) it doesn’t look as if 
Loki is behind all this trouble. The hints 
you get along the way seem to suggest 
that something else is going on. I’d tell 
you more, but that’s as much as I think 
you should know from me.. 

The look of the game is pretty 
similar to the first one. There are lots of 
changes in the way it all plays. Most 
noticably the fights are resolved in the 
game. There’s no separate fight se¬ 
quence; it’s a case of hack away and 
see if you win. There’s some skill to it, 


Looks like there's been a 
bit of a fracas here. 

Captured already? 
Easy to get out. 


people are excel¬ 
lent. 

A little lack¬ 
ing on the sound 
though, I fear. Not much going on in 
this department. 

Instead, let’s concentrate on 
the gameplay. There’s two characters 
under your control, Heimdall himself 
and a Valkyrie (the chapesses who 
used to sing the brave warriors to 
Valhalla after they died or so we’re 
told). The joystick controls them around 
the screen and the mouse is used to 
move stuff around their backpacks 
and to select spells 
and the like. 

At the be¬ 
ginning, you enter 
a hall (you guessed 
it, the Hall of 


locked in his cupboard (for only Odin 
knows how long) and then head off and 
rescue his daughter. But I’m telling you 
the plot... 

There are a variety of weap¬ 
ons, from throwing hands and bows to 
swords and stuff like that. You’ll need 
them as well, because not everyone 
you meet wants to be your friend. In 
fact, most of them want to beat the * 
out of you. (I know how it feels, 
Heimdall!) 

Spells and scrolls will help you 
too. Some are offensive, for use in 
combat, and others are general ones 
to restore energy. 

On reflection, I’d say Heimdall 
2 is a pretty fine effort. I was kind about 
Darkmere last month and I think this 
plays even better (the games have 
their similarities - well, they’re both 
isometric and involve you running all 
over). It’s the looks of the game that 
give it class. Pretty good stuff. If you 
liked the first one, you’ll fondle cows’ 
udders to get you hands on this. 


there’s nothing like 
that here. Then again, you’re sup¬ 
posed to be a god, so there’s little point 
working out how ‘hard’ you are. 

The animation is what you’d 
expect from Core - blinking good. The 
animated cartoon idea is really com¬ 
ing to fruition. Very much like Premier 
in looks, except it’s got more direc¬ 
tions and heaps more gameplay. 

The little animations that crop 
up from time to time as you encounter 


Graphics: 93% 


Sound: N/A 


Gameplay: 85% 


Overall: 86% 













































I/I Entertainment Now. 



King 


fullest 


6 


each criss crossing to one of several 
different endings. Ultimately the course 
you follow determines your difficulty 
level and the flexible design means 
that you can reach the end and yet still 
experience only a small portion of 
everything the adventure has to offer. 

Gone is the traditional text 


Sierra £29.99 1 Meg 



“Mow! What can I do for you?’ 


F' Ti § m ££|6 


Alexander awakens to find himself on an 
unfamiliar beach. For a moment, he is too 
dazed to remember how he got here. 


brief item as they say. Life goes on 
however and Alex wonders if he will 
ever see her again. One day, he gets 
a message from her; she's deeply 
unhappy with events at her Royal 
Palace on the Land of The Green 
Isles. Alex sets sail to visit, but his ship 
breaks apart in a storm and fortunately 
he is washed up on the shore of Crown 
Island, Cassima‘s home. 

This is where your quest begins 
and your problems start. Although the 
game's central theme is readily 
apparent, your direction and goal are 
purposely vague. Through hundreds 
of locations, Roberta Williams, the 
games architect, has cut many paths, 


At the start Alexander is washed ashore. 

I magine the scene. Al//editorial office 
9.00 am, the lights are dimmed. 
Dave the editorial roadie has just 
powered up all the hardware, checked 
out the disk space and put on the 
coffee machine ready for the journos 
to take their places on screen. His last 
job before going down to typesetting is 
to get that morning’s batch of software 
and hand it over to the relevant 
reviewer. Geoff ‘the nose' Smith gets 
the betting programs, Antony Jacobson 
gets anything with a pixel of flesh in it, 
David Taylor is completely at home 
with all types of games as long as they 
are from Ruth at Gremlin or his other 
friends at Core, but without doubt 
anything remotely snoresville goes in 
Andy Moss's tray and on this particular 
morning that was just where Sierra's 
Kings Quest VI lay. He walks in, 
oblivious to the sniggers from the rest 
of the team. After all, when did Sierra 
release anything that ran faster than a 
dead snail eh? He sits down, looks at 
the disks staring up at him and with a 
resigned sigh loads up the adventure 
and begins to play.... and play.... and 
play!! CAN THIS BE? YES, IT'STRUE! 
Sierra have really done it. A wondurous 
adventure in true Sierra style with 
fabulous drop dead graphics, great 
music, ripping storyline, tough puzzles 
and.... Speed!!!! 

It's been a long time coming, 


parser; it's been replaced with a more 
intuitive graphical cursor. By simply 
clicking the right mouse button, you 
cycle through four all purpose actions: 
walk, talk, look, and touch. Select the 
object to be acted upon and then press 
the left mouse button. A hidden top - 
down menu offers additional control of 
inventory items and game save 
mechanics. 

Using the expertise of Kronos, 
the Hollywood special effects wizards 
there are many cinematic sequences 
using unique camera angles, 3D 
panning and long tracking shots. 

Sierra describes Kings Quest 
VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow, as 
an adventure so vast you may never 
experience it all. You'll have the time 
of your life trying to prove them wrong. 

It's brilliant. And heralds a 
whole new era for all Sierra fans. 


VERDICT 


Graphics: 


Sound 


Gameplay: 


Overall: 


Note the drop down icon board. 


but Sierra have kept faith with their 
many Amiga fans and produced a 
marvellous version that fairly zips 
along. Rumour has it that the Amiga 
version has been programmed by a 
Brit here in the UK and good for them 
too, for realising that there is still a 
huge audience over here for their 
products. 

KQ VI carries on the continuing 
saga of the first royal family of Daventry 
King Graham, Quenn Valanice and 
their kids Alexander and Rosella. 
Newcomers needn't feel left out, as in 
earlier games the story is completely 
self contained. In the previous episode, 
Alex's father rescued a young princess, 
Cassima, and she and Alex became a 


Lots of dialogue boxes in this game. Who's that dodgy bloke in the cloak? 


100 


AUI • JULY 1994 







































































AUI Entertainment Now. 


Mandtester 

HmSrlpAJFll Premier League 

UIII16II Champions 


Krisalis £29. 



It needs a brave publisher to take on 
the mighty icons of computer footie, 
Sensi Soccer or Kick Off, but Krisalis 
are fiercely positive abouttheirfootball 
products and with quite a few under 
their belt are entitled to be bullish. 

There is a tendency in the 
Press to be trendy about certain games 
and Sensi Soccer is without doubt one 
of those that seems to be revered. 



Picking Spurs to me seems daft 
if it's called Man U. 


Good game that it is, for me it does 
have its faults as does Manchester 
United, but there is one overriding 


question about all these footie games; 
are they different enough to be worth 
forking out another 30 quid? 

Sensi and Kick Off are too 
similar for you to buy both. MUPLC 
whilst clearly influenced by these 
classic games, does have some unique 
features about it that makes it worth 
the admission money. The Tacti Grid' 
system for a start allows you to 
precisely tailor your team’s formation. 
Each player can be individually 
assigned to a single sector on the pitch 
or told to support the attack or defence. 
This provides possible overlapping 
fullbacks for an attacking team with 
plenty of width, or a good defensive 
team that breaks well. 

There are all manner of 
variations you can factor in and the 
grid is accessed at any time there is a 
dead ball situation, so maybe you are 
one up with 5 minutes left, you can 
pack your whole penalty area with 
your entire side and defend your way 



Yes! The keeper won't stop that one! 



to victory!! 

The pace is fast and furious, 
maybe a little too fast for comfort and 
the goalkeeper can be a little dodgy on 
his kicking direction, but I like the fact 
that the unexpected might happen, as 
in real football, it‘s a good leveller. 

The sprites look great, perform 
plenty of diving headers, overhead 
kicks and sliding tackles and the kicking 
method is the opposite of Sensi, you 
hold down the button for power and 
then release it to shoot. After touch is 
there, allowing you to bend the ball left 
and right and it works particularly well 
at corners. 

The data is bang up to date, 
with over 2500 players and all the 
leagues including the GM Conference 
included, with up to four players 
managing their own teams. 


The management section is in 
fact better than Sensi and Kick Off, 
and you even gettochoose yourteams 
strips, squad numbers, skin tones and 
who takes what at free kicks and 
penalties. 

I liked it a lot, so there! 





The tacti grid for custom made tactics. 


This corner's bound to be low and hard. 



Bang up to date. Even Ronnie Rosenthal's in. 


NAUGHTY ONES 


With two characters looking not unlike 
the Blues Brothers, this entertaining 
platformer is a cross between Rick 
Dangerous and Parasol Stars. There 
are five worlds, each made up of a 
number of single screens levels that 
get more numerous the deeper into 
the game you get, but start with 11 in 
the first world. 

The game follows the tried and 
tested collect,jump and zap monsters 
method of most platformers with you 
collecting a key to progress to the next 
screen. But as you progress things get 
slightly more complicated with switches 
to throw to make blocking walls 
disappear, but the switches are 
necessarily on the same screen! 


Interactivision 

£25.99 



Loads of nasties to kill and if 
you kill them in the right order (indicated 
by an arrow over their head) you get 
extra points. One downer is that there 
is no password routine, or continues to 
use, or any save game feature of any 
kind, which frankly these days is just 


ON A StlfWV 
AfY£RNOON* 

NAoGrtYV SR. OTHERS, 

-John £ sih; 
iiZRt SLAVING 

£t>SB£RSAW-S IN 
fl£«>S N£AR Trtg-IR 
rtOM£... 


Well wicked! Get down and bounce with 
these crazy dudes. 


not on. So I guess you'll just have 
either to get really good at it to finish, 
or find a cheat mode. 

If you want a platform game 
that's cute, very playable and gets the 
brain working overtime too, this one's 
for you. 


VERDICT 



JULY 1994 • AUI 


101 













































































































C/I Entertainment Now. 


TORNADO/TORNADO A 


1 Meg/1.5 Meg Digital Integration £39.99 


I just wanted to get airborne and strafe 
a few Migs as quickly as possible and 
usefully, there’s a quickstart option to 
do just that, placing you in the aircraft 
at 10000 feet. Once the basic flight 
controls have been learnt, it’s then 
onto the more sophisticated aspects 
of the simulation. 


The fields below - not spectacular and a bit 
jerky. 

Tornado from Digital Integration is a 
simulation of Britain’s front line de¬ 
fence aircraft. Flying one of these 
babyie is no mean feat and with navi¬ 
gation, formation flying and combat to 
deal with as well, it’s obvious that this 
is a heavyweight flight sim. 

The package provides every¬ 
thing that’s needed to learn about the 
aircraft and how to fly sucessfully; the 
simulator even provides a simulator (!) 
for novice pilots to train on. The hefty 
manual takes the pilot through every 
stage of development, starting with 
basic flight training and moving onto 
navigation and combat tactics as ex¬ 
perience is gained. As a seasoned 
veteran of Interceptor, FSII and so on, 


I'm losing 
control - 
thank God 
it's only a 
sim! 











Kmgnjtttc; J&rn .Y.-y.ra;-L 


phisticated targeting and rangefinding 
system. If you’re interested in military 
aviation, it’s a fascinating insight into 
modern weapon systems, but some 
may find it a tad too complicated and 
fiddly. I found that practice on the 
simulator and training missions paid 
dividends, the secret being to plan 
well ahead of the target, flipping to the 
navigator’s seat to set everything up 
well in advance before zooming in on 
autopilot. 

The automatic navigation and 
targetting capabilities, including its leg¬ 
endary terrain following RADAR do 


The standard option to view from outside. 

The quick key reference comes 
in handy as there are over 170 differ¬ 
ent possible keyboard commands. 
Even a simple take-off requires some 
rapid key punching as you struggle to 
get the undercarriage up, adjust the 
flaps and sweep angle and then en¬ 
gage autopilot. It certainly takes a while 
to feel comfortable with the controls, 
but soon it’s time to engage in some 
combat. This can be done using the 
simulator, the training missions or an 
actual campaign. There are 4 cam¬ 
paigns containing many missions. 

The missions slowly 
develop 
so that 
the end 
of a 
cam¬ 
paign 
sees the 
end of 
the oppo¬ 
nent, with 
freedom 
and de¬ 
mocracy for 
all!! 

Sucessfully 
completing 
even one mis¬ 
sion is tough 
though. There 
is a great deal 
to learn about 
the principles of 
loft freefall and 
laser guided 
bombing, made 
all the more com¬ 
plicated by the im¬ 
plementation of 
the Tornado’s so- 


Reach for the skies? No, 
pass me the vomit bag; I 
get air sick. 


Where shall 
we start? 
In the air 


AGA version. Firstly, when it says it 
needs 1.5 megs it really means 1.5 
megs and using a hard drive with a 
2meg 1200 means that it’s a close 
shave when running from Workbench. 
I had to remove 2 small programs that 
were on Workbench to get the pro¬ 
gram running. 

The AGA version does pro¬ 
vide a few extra frills like 256 colour 
pictures of various aircraft for perusal 
and a louder engine note, but in-game 
there is hardly any difference. Still, if 
you’ve got AGA, may as well use it. 

Some other parts common to 
both versions include the explore op¬ 
tion, which simply lets you glide around 
the landscape at 800knots. There are 


Heading straight up in an attempt to shake off 
my opponent. 

take some of the burden off the pilot, 
but it’s still panic time whenever a 
target is reached since there are AA 
guns to be countered, targetting and 
timing checks to be made and finally 
bombs to be dropped. 

The missions acquire an eerie 
sense of anticipation as your squad¬ 
ron takes off at dawn. These formation 
runs require a careful check on speed 
and navigation since an early or late 
attack by one aircraft can jeapodise 
the whole mission. I was more frus¬ 
trated with having to navigate back 
from a sucessful mission with low fuel 
and then crashing into a friendly just 
before landing. It’s also frustrating that 
on some missions an apparently per¬ 
fectly timed run results in the target 
being missed. This happens quite fre¬ 
quently and is a pain because each 
mission must be sucessfully completed 
before the next can be started. 

This is a game with long term 
appeal though; the graphics are good, 
well up to the needs of the game, 
although they are very slow on 
unaccelerated machines. An ‘020 is 
just about OK, but something faster is 
much better, as is playing the game 
from hard drive. The AGA version won’t 
even work from floppy since it uses a 
lot more memory. 

Digital Integration have re¬ 
leased an AGA version, due, they say, 
to public demand. It offers 256 colour 
screen and improved sound effects, 
but other than that there is little or no 
difference between them. I experi¬ 
enced a lot more problems with the 


The display options allow some choice, but 
the game has a slow update anyway. 

plenty of external views of both your 
craft and all the other planes flying about, 
these are good fun to play with but 
sometimes a little restricted - remote 
control flying a la Interceptor, is impossi¬ 
ble. 

In conclusion, it’s a program 
guaranteed to appeal to flight sim buffs 
and hardened combat sim freaks. This 
review cannot cover every detail of 
what is a very big simulation, so it’s 
undoubtably going to keep coming up 
with new things for as long as you’re 
interested. On the downside, there 
seem to be a few bugs in the AGA 
version and some of the more obscure 
flight systems appear to be there sim¬ 
ply to confuse matters. 


VERDICT 


Graphics: 


Gameplay: 






































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• ROME • ROLE PLAYING ADVENTURE £25. 

• MYTH • STOP THE SPREAD OF EVIL . £19. 

• TRIVIAL PURSUIT • POPULAR QUIZ .. £29. 

FREE FROM S ILICA (Sea Top Lett) . £265. 

2Mb PACK VALUE: £750. 

ve rsion PACK SAVING: £401. 

*V 30 SILICA PRICE: £349. 


FREE DELIVERY 

PACK INCLUDES: 

• 1u> AMIGA 600. £199.99 

• BU LT-IN In, DRIVE & TV MO0UIAT0R 

• DELUXE PAINT III. £79.99 

• MICROPROSE GRAND PRIX. £34.99 

• SILLY PUTTY. £25.99 

• PUSH OVER . £25.99 

FREE FROM SILICA (See Top Left) £125.96 

TOTAL PACK VALUE: £492.91 
LESS PACK SAVING: £293.91 
SILICA PRICE: £199,00 


FREE DELIVERY 

PACK INCLUDES: 

• In®, AMIGA 600. £199.99 

• BUILT-INI mb DRIVE . 

• BUILT-IN TV MODULATOR .. 

• DELUXE PAINT III . £79.99 

• LEMMINGS . £25.99 

FREE FROM SILICA (See Top Lett) £125.96 

TOTAL PACK VALUE: £431.93 
LESS PACK SAVING: £242.93 
SILICA PRICE: £189.00 


PREVIOUSLY 


PREVIOUSLY 


PREVIOUSLY 


PREVIOUSLY 


WORTH 

OVER 


INC VAT - AMC 0666 ♦ RAM 0605, 


INC VAT - AMC 0649 » RAM 0605 


STEREO MONITOR 

FOR ALL AMIGAS 


AMIGA 4000 

SPECIFICATIONS 


AMIGA 4000 

CONFIGURATIONS 

The Amiga 4000 030EC, 040LC and 
040 SCSI Tower are available in 
several RAM/Hard Drive options from 
Silica (please see below). All are fully 
configured and approved and carry 
Commodore’s full one year on-site 
warranty. RAM upgrades are also 
available from Silica. Due to current 
fluctuations in the market, please call 
for upgrade prices. 


SPECTACULAR VOYAGE 


GREAT NEW PACK 
NOW WITH 


INCLUDES: 

• Deluxe Paint 
IV AGA 

• WordWorth V2 

• WordWorth 
Print Manager 


FREE STEREO SPEAKERS & CABLE 
FOR CONNECTION TO THE AMIGA 
MICROVITEC 1438 MONITOR 

• .28mm Dot Pitch 14" Colour 
Screen 

• Up to 1024 x 768 Resolution 

• 15-38KHz Horiz Frequencies 

• Analogue RGB Input 

• External Controls: Brightness, 
Contrast, Horizontal and 
Vertical Centring/Height 

*Sc n rel!f re FBii ° iLI<E " Y . 

• Stereo £299 

Sound ISC VAT-MON 5438 


1084S 

• .42mm Dot Pitch 14" Colour Screen 

• 600 dots x 285 lines Resolution - 15.75 khz 

• Analog RGB, Ditigal TTL and Composite Video 

• w Xl , ernal Contro |s: I CABLE REQUIRED FOR C032 1 

Volume, Brightness. CAB5235 - Z8 95 vc v*t 

Contrast, Colour, -’ 

Horizontal & Vertical, 

Centring Height FREE DELIVERY 

• Anti-glare Screen -j f|fl 1 

• Headphone Socket I 

• Stereo Sound inc vat mon4hm J 


PLUS! 

DANGEROUS STREETS 
WING COMMANDER 
DIGGERS & OSCAR 


25mhz 68030ec 
DESKTOP 

4 Mb 01/1 HARD 
RAM £ I 4Mb DRIVE 


1 YEAR ON SITE/AT HOME WARRANTY 

ON ALL CONFIGURAT ONS 


25mhz 68040lc 

DESKTOP 


• 32-BIT POWER 
The worlds first 
CD-ROM console to 

use 32-bit technology, 4 x (aster than a 
68000 CPU 

• 2Mb RAM 

• CD QUALITY STEREO SOUND 

• 16.8 MILLION COLOUR PALETTE 

• GAMES FROM BELOW £20 

• PLUGS INTO A TV OR MONITOR 

• PLAYS MUSIC CDs 

• DUAL SPEED 

Transfers data almost twice as fast as 
ordinary CD-ROM drives 

• MULTI-SESSION 

Recognises ALL data on CDs, even if the 
information was added after initial pressing 

• 11 BUTTON CONTROL PAD 

• COMPATIBLE WITH 26 CDTV TITLES 


^ • FULL SCREEN VIDEO-CD 

Optional extra FMV module which 
allows you to watch films on the CD32 • 
compatible with the latest Video-CD 
standard, endorsed by JVC, Matsushita. 
Phillips and Sony (see left) 

• CD-i LINEAR COMPATIBLE 

With optional FMV module, will play CD-i 
Rims and music videos 

• 6 FREE CD TITLES 

• MICROCOSM • CHAOS ENGINE 

• DANGEROUS STREETS • OSCAR 

• V/ING COMMANDER • DIGGERS 


FREE 

AMIGA 

SCART 

CABLE 

FROM 

SILICA 


6& 5403 £18QQ 

„ INC VAT ■ A'.'H fi-if,- Unfc I WWW, 


SHARP 

QV3750 


Silica are a fully authorised Amiga 
dealer. We can upgrade Amiga 600 
or 1200’s with hard drives, for new or 
existing owners, without affecting 
Commodore’s official on site 
warranty. We offer other upgrades 
and repair service for A500 and 
A500 plus computers. 

UPGRADES & REPAIRS 

• Latest test equipment 

• 20 trained technicians 

• I.OOOs of parts in stock 

• FAST, 48 hour service 

o We can collect (£5+VAT) 

• FREE return courier 
° All work guaranteed 

CALL FOR A PRICE LIST 


A600 A1200 A4000-030 A4000-040 

The A4000 runs at up to 21 times the 
speed of the A600. 

GRAPHICS: " > iTT" 

© 

• RESOLUTIONS UP TO 5 • 

1280x512and800x600 I. i* 

OPEN ARCHITECTURE: 

The A4000 has been designed for maximum 
flexibility providing plenty of room for 
memory & peripheral expansion. 

• 4x16/32-BIT ZORRO III SLOTS (TOWERx5) 

• 3xPC-AT SLOTS (T0WERx4) f T MUVJ 

• l x24-bit VIDEO SLOT (TOWERx 2 WAUM 
POWER: 

• f ,76Mb W FLOPPY DRIVE 


• PLUGS INTO THE BACK OF THE CD 32 

• ALLOWS YOU TO PLAY VIDEO CDs 
Full screen, full motion films & music videos 

• CD-I LINEAR COMPATIBLE 

Allows you to play CD-i films & music videos 


25mhz 68040 
SCSI TOWER 


6&m 214£ flQQQ 

INC VAT - AVB 5216 I WWW 


• PERFECT FREEZE FRAME 

• INSTANT TRACK 
SELECTION 

• SUPERB CD r=T m 
QUALITY SOUND JE 

FREE DELIVERY INCV 


• 14‘ Remote Control Colour TV/Monitor 

• Inc RGB Scart Socket for use with Amigas 

• Infra Red Remote Control 

• Or Screen Display to Adjust Colour/Volume 

• Or/Off Timer 

• Flash Back Feature 

• 40 Channel 
Programme Memory 

• FREE Amiga Scart 


FREE DELIVERY 


A FULL RANGE OF GAMES. FILMS & 
MUSIC VIDEO TITLES ARE AVAILABLE 
FOR CD32 ■ CALL FOR A PRICE LIST 


RAM UPGRADES 

CALL FOR PRICES 


+ 6 FREE 
CD TITLES 


Cable from Silica 


f FROM 
I SILICA 


NEW MODEL 


NEW 


NEW! 

AA 

CHIPSET 


AMIGA 1200 PA 

RACE ‘N’ CHASE 

rV Q + HARD DRIVE 

VIW OPTIONS 

COMPUTER COMBAT 



(Sfrfe’eAS.c CSSB 

OOLs, MEW! 

GFA BASIC llfclli 

[ 1 YEAR ON SITE/AT HOME WARRANTY 1 

ON ALL CONFIGURATIONS | 

1 1 YEAR ON STTE/AT HOME WARRANTY | 

| ON ALL CONFIGURATIONS | 

FREE DELIVERY 

PACK INCLUDES: 

• 2w> Amiga 1200 • Nigel Mansell's 

J • Trolls AGA World Championship AGA 

+ FREE FROM SILICA (See Top Left) 

RACE N’ CHASE 

FREE DELIVERY 

PACK INCLUDES: 

• 2ms Amiga 1200 • WordWorth V2 

• Total Carnage • WordWorth Print Manager 

• Brian 'he Lion • Day By Day Planner 

• Zool 2 • Personal Paint V4 

+ FREE FROM SILICA (See Top Left) 

1 2;,. 0s £299 

INC VAT-AMC 1224 WBllr W 

2rw Ow CQ^IQ 

INC VAT-AMC 2049 

2s. 80 £449 

INC VAT - AMC 1480 

2’s« 80 £499 

INC VAT • AMC 2081 th* Wt 

2?w 1271 £499 

2s, 127 £549 

INC VAT-AMC 2128 

2= 200 £549 

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%..20f-£599 

£699 

2®w 340 £749 

INC VAT AMC 2341 

AMIGA 1200 SPECIFICATIONS • 2 

• 68020EC Processor - 14.19** Clock Speed * 

• 32-bit Architecture^ Chip RAM 

• Amiga DOS v3.0/Buitt-in TV Modulator • A 

• AA Chip Set/16.8 Million Colours • H 

• 1 x 32-Bit CPU/RAM Expansion Slot 

• PCMCIA Smart Card Slot *C 

• 96 Key Keyboard with Numerc Keypad • L 

V Internal IDE Hard Drive Options 

Year On-site Warranty 

HARD DRIVE OPTIONS 

pproved 256' Hard Drives 

itted correctly below metal safety shield - does not 
ivalidate warranty 

overed by Commodore’s Official 1 Year OnASite Warranty 
ook for Special 'Official Upgrade' sticker 


s\lic 4 



THE SILICA SERVICE 


Before you decide when 
to buy your new computer, 
we suggest you think very 
carefully about WHERE 

- - - , you buy it. Consider what it 

<C£ fO will be like a few months after 
you have made your purchase, 
when you may require additional peripherals or 
software, or help and advice. And, will the company 
you buy from contact you with details of new products? 
At Silica, we ensure that you will have nothing to worry 
about. With our unrivalled experience and expertise, we 
can meet our customers' requirements with an 
understanding which is second to none. Complete and 
return the coupon now for our latest FREE literature 
and begin to experience the “Silica Service". 


• PART OF A £50M A YEAR COMPANY: 

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I SHOWROOMSi 

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Debenhams (3rd Floor). 334 Oxford St 

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061-832 8666 

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Debenhams - OPEN 13/6/94 

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Debenhams (3rd Roor), The Moor 

0742 768611 

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081-302 8811 

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0703 223888 

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0702 468039 


[To: Silica, AMUSR-0794-211, 1-4 The Mews, Hatherley Rd, Sidcup, Kent, DA14 4DX 


PLEASE SEND ME A 64 PAGE AMIGA CATALOGUE 


| Mr/Mrs/Miss/Ms: . Initials:. I 

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E&OE - Advertised prices and specifications may change - Please return the coupon for the latest in'ormation. 






























































































































































































































Entertainment Now. 


Total 


T he baker mission 

BRIEF 

OK, Listen up men! We‘re 
getting closer to the gener¬ 
al’s base and so the defences are 
going to get a lot hairier. From your 
current position, you must make your 
way along the main supply road to¬ 
wards the airfields. The road is swarm¬ 
ing with Armoured Personnel Vehi¬ 
cles and SCUDs. Once you reach the 
air fields, dig in and defend against 
ground troops and then destroy all the 
planes. There will be some air back up 
for you and you‘11 need to lay tracer 
beams down for the planes to lock on 
the targets you select. Good Luck!!! 

Who said that Cannon Fodder 
was the last word in gruesome fun, 
eh? 


Total Carnage is just, er, total 
carnage from start to finish. There is a 
plot, of course; some crazy, power 
mad General has created his own 
army of mutant grunts from radioac¬ 
tive goo produced in his nuclear gen¬ 
erator. Ready to wreak havoc on the 
entire globe, El Generale has taken 
hostages and as much firepower as 
he can muster. Only the Doomsday 




Carnage 


Ice £29.99 1 Meg 


Squad (guess who that 
is!) can possibly stop 
him. Fortunately you 
have an arsenal of 
weaponry that with out 
doubt will blow any¬ 
thing away, the only 
snag is you've got to 
keep alive long enough 
to use it. But hey, that's 
the whole point of the 
game isn't it? i,on ' , ,orget 

The list reads like a what's 
what of carnage - grenade, rocket and 
plasma launchers, flame throwers, 
mines, smart bombs, spray fire rifles 
and let’s not forget your little pea 
shooter rifle! 

Coming from the same sta¬ 
ble as Mortal Kombat, Carnage has 
that familiar look about it; you know, 
loud, self assured and confident it 
knows it's on to a winner. It's packed 
full of large sprites in kind of Cannon 
Fodder meets Desert Strike meets 
Terminator scenario of total may¬ 
hem, with 20 scrolling battle zones, 


Mass Destruction! Yahoo! 


The General's 
on the loose. 


to save those media folks. 

each one more testing than the one 
before. 

There's no complex manual to 
work through. It's all fairly straight for¬ 
ward and that’s what makes it work for 
me. You load up and you're in. 

The gameplay itself is a breeze, 
just shoot everything except any 
hostages and collect everything you 
can lay your hands on. 

ICE is an underrated publisher 
that one day is going to get the praise 
it deserves. Maybe after this one and 
with the great Akira to follow, Stuart 
Bell and the team just might crack it. 


VERDICT 


Graphics: 


Sound: 


Gameplay: 


Overall: 




VERDICT 


Graphics: 90% 


Sound: 


85% 


Gameplay: 90% 


The USA map with some familiar tracks. 


Overall: 


This road's a bit slippy, but it won't cause me any problem. 


decide when and how much money 
you spend on running repairs. 

The graphics scroll as smooth 
as butter on silk and the atmospheric 
soundtrack gets the pulse beating 
twenty to the dozen. 


As in all racing games, the two 
player option is the most fun to play, 
but if you are looking for a racing game 
that has depth, and a sub challehge 
look no further, this is it. 


Welcome to Crazy Cars 3. Oppos, sorry, 
Lambourghini American Challenge. 

The game features over 85 
races in all 49 mainland states across 
America, mixed with day and night 
stages through all types of weather. 
As in Crazy Cars 3 the subject is the 


I win! Loads of cash. Cheers very much, pals! 


Titus £24.95 
1 Meg 


This is really CRAZY CARS 3 with a 2 
player option and a Lamborghini li¬ 
cense. Timed to coincide with the re¬ 
lease of the Diablo, the successor to 
the spectacular Countach, costing a 
mere $240,000 with a top speed of 
248 mph (that's nearly $1 per hour), 
fortunately the game doesn't cost that! 


world of illegal racing, speeding along 
public roads avoiding oncoming traffic 
and dodging local speed police to win 
prize money and taking on bets with 
your fellow competitiors. 

As you increase your bank 
balance, you can enter better races 
with bigger prizes and re-customize 
your car with essential gizmos like a 
police radio for spotting those road 
cops, super brakes, snow tyres, better 
gear box and best of all extra turbo 
boosts. 

Yourcarwill get damaged dur¬ 
ing the racing and it’s up to you to 


104 


AUI • JULY 1994 

































































■ II 


sssss 


serious Amiga' 


, s ornw ABe V 


Subscribe to Amiga User 
International and you’ll not 
only receive the magazine 
long before it reaches the 
shops, but you’ll also SAVE £6 
on the normal cover price. 

From as little as £39 you will 
receive 12 issues of AUI - 
delivered straight to 
YOUR DOOR. X 


r 


AMIGA USER 
INTERNATIONAL 

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regular copy. 

I enclose a cheque for £.made payable to 

AUI LIMITED 

Please send to: Customer Interface Ltd, Bradley Pavilions, 
Pear Tree Road, Bradley Stoke, Bristol, BS12 OBQ. 

Name... 

Address. 

Postcode. 


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Date- 


Annual subscription rates: UK £39.00 Europe: £59.80 
] Rest of World £96.20 

OVERSEAS RATES INCLUDE AIR MAIL SERVICE 
I_I 






























James Pond III 


Operation Starfish 


Millenium A1200 only £29.99 



I've just been blown away by a rat in a tank! 

James Pond. Robocod. Two great little 
puns. Where’s the joke in Operation 
Starfish? That’s what I want to know. 

Anyway, our fishy pal is back 
once more, with his legs back and he’s 
bigger than ever. In every sense. The 
levels are huge and so is the agent 
himself. I swear he’s put on a few 
pounds. 

Pond is brilliantly animated; it 
is very, very smooth. Maybe and I 
mean maybe, Millenium could have 


tweeked the gameplay a tiny bit. There 
are places where Pond will simply skid 
off a block, because he does not stop 
dead and you spend ten minutes trying 
todothatjump. It’snot skill, butluck.As 
ever, there are tons of hidden goodies 



Getting up to these dizzy heights on this level is a 
real pain. 


to be found and that’s half the fun. 
Pond can now punch as well as jump 
on the bad guys. It’s not an easy task. 

I could tell you the plot, like the 
fact that the evil Mr Maybe, whom 
Pond has defeated twice before, is 
now on the moon doing his evil things. 
But I won’t. 

Who cares? It’s just an excuse 
for the great platform fun that is Pond III. 

There’s nothing much to sur¬ 
prise you. Jump, run, kill and collect. I 
loved Robocod though and this is a 
worthy sequel (if you can have a se¬ 
quel to a sequel, that is). It’s very slick 
indeed. 

The music, on the other hand, 
drives you up the wall. I had to turn it off 
after a while, because I was risking 



Now, I'm being swallowed by a huge frog - it's 
not my day. 


getting committed. It’s notthatthe music 
is bad; it’s just the typical dinky tune 
that goes on and on and on... 

If you were a fan of the other 
two, Pond III is for you. If you’ve not 
played either of the others, you can’t 
like platform games at all, so this is still 
not for you. 


VERDICT 



Brian the Lion 



A lion wearing shorts and called Brian. 


A1200 Psygnosis £25.00 W VERDICT 




Going to be bowled over? Team 17 
are continuing to bring out full, original 
games at budget prices. Their next 
effort is a bowling game, King Pin, 
which will appear this summer for 


Girls and boys are represented - nice and 
sexually equal. 

£9.99. The game seems like it should 
look OK, but I’ve yet to play a bowling 
game that plays anything like the real 
thing. It’s a hard sport to simulate, but 
we’ll see how Team 17 do. 


Will it be a strike or a strike out? 


Sleepwalker 


Standard/A1200 & A4000 £9.991 Meg 


For some reason, enhanced versions 
of games always take a little longer to 
appear than the standard ones. Brian 
has now made his conversion and is 
available for A1200 users. 

The original was a smart look¬ 
ing platform game, which showed all 
the polish for which the Reflections 
team are renowned. This time, it’s the 
same, but better. It is exactly as you 
would expect for an AGA version - 
better graphics with more colours. 

The game is still a lush and 
playable platformer with a cute sprite 
who has some amusing (if that’s ever 
the right word for the ‘humour’ in 
games) traits.Brian will be a roaring 
success. 


Graphics: 93% 


Sound: 80% 


Gameplay: 85% 


Overall: 87% 


Wow. Games are really starting to 
appear on budget really quickly now. I 
guess the gap is closing up in the 
same way that the difference between 
cinema and video releases has done. 
Sleepwalker was a good game at 
full price and is quite a bargain 
now. It’s not an easy game though. 

You take control of Ralph, 
a dog with a mission. Quite simply, 
save your sleepwalking masterfrom 
getting himself killed. You are invin¬ 
cible, but Lee isn’t. So run ahead of 
him and clear any obstacles. 

Just walking the dog...or is it the master? 


It’s good fun and it’s hard work. 
What a dog’s life. 




106 


AUI • JULY 1994 

























































PLAY THE PIANO IN 
THREE WEEKS? 

THAT WOULD 
TAKE A MIRACLE! 


The Miracle Piano Teaching System 
is probably the world’s easiest, most 
entertaining way of learning how to 
play the piano, a unique way of 
bringing out the musician in you. 

All you do is plug the professional 
quality keyboard into your computer... 
load the software... and away you go. 

The system sounds fantastic too. The Miracle 
keyboard has its own set of built-in stereo speakers, 128 
different sounds (organ, piano, vibraphone, digital 
waves etc), four drum pads, MIDI ports, plus stereo out¬ 
puts for playing through your hifi. You can even use all 

128 sounds without 
the computer... so you 
can perform at a 
friends house. 

Like a piano 
there’s a sustain 
footpedal... we’ve 
even included 

personal headphones, use them until you’re ready for a 
public performance! 

It’s a comprehensive system too. When you select 
from the Main Menu there is a choice of six* rooms to 
explore which 



THE LEARN¬ 
ING SYSTEM 
IS FULLY 
COMPREHENSIVE 
SO YOU GET 
MULTIPLE CHOICES. 


THIS IS 
THE SYSTEM 
PACKAGE: 



' Professional keyboard • Full Software package 
All necessary plugs/connectors • Footpedal • Earphones 
Teaching guide • Technical manual • Learning manual 
12 month Guarantee 


The Miracle is available for 
IBM PC & Compatibles, Macintosh, 
Amiga and NES. *Some versions operate 
on a specific range of features. 




. 

MINDSCAPE 


The Miracle Offer, Dept. MD14, Mindscape 
International Ltd., FREEPOST, Priority House, 
Charles Avenue, Burgess Hill, West Sussex RH15 9BR 





1 ■ ■ . ■ :■ . ■. 

RHj 

V_ 

J 


PERSONALISED 
LESSONS GIVE 
YOU INDIVIDUAL 
ATTENTION. 


between them provide 
a fully balanced 
musical education. 

Practice in private or 
appear with The 
Miracle’s concert 
orchestra. You can 

even record your own creations in the 8 track studio* - 
a feature unique to The Miracle! 

The Miracle’s repertoire is enormous - there are 36 
levels of play, 250* lessons to complete and 128 
different instruments to play. There’s also a wide 
variety of tunes for you to learn and play along with, 
plus extra Song Collections* are available to provide 
you with even more tunes to play. In fact, because of 
the way the lessons are structured, within a few hours 
of installing The Miracle you’ll be playing along to 
Beethoven. 

The next day you’ll master notes. Understanding 
chords and rhythm comes soon afterwards. Inside three 
weeks you’ll already be a better musician than you ever 
thought possible - playing with two hands... with a 
lifetime’s playing pleasure ahead of you. 


THE MIRACLE OFFER 


Dept. MD14, Mindscape International Ltd., 

FREEPOST, Priority House, Charles Avenue, Burgess Hill, West Sussex RH15 9BR 
YES! Send me The Miracle Piano Teaching System 
I have indicated my choice (All prices include VA.T.). 

G IBM PC & Compatibles £299 0 Amiga £299 G Macintosh £349 
□ NES £249 □ NES Console & Miracle £279 


Name . 

Address.. 


..(CAPITAL LETTERS) 


..Postcode.. 


Telephone No: (In case of queries) . 

G I have enclosed my cheque made payable to Mindscape International Ltd., 

for £ . (Amount) which includes free postage and packing. 

G Please debit my Q Access G Visa G American Express 
G Switch Credit Card (Please tick). CARD NO: 


I 


Expiry Date: . Signature . 

Date: . Please allow 28 days for delivery from receipt of order. 

IMPORTANT: Offer applies only while stocks last.. 

G From time to time your name and address may be provided to carefully screened companies who 
may wish to send you literature. If you prefer not to participate please tick this box. MD14 - AUI/JF/E 






























































AUI Me ntor 


J^migaGuide is Commodore’s 
^^hypertext system for the 
Amiga. As well as providing 
R m a system for constructing 
hypertext documents, it can be used to 
provide on-line help. It’s available for 
Workbench 2.xx as a freely distribut¬ 
able archive (which can be found on 
Aminet) and comes as part of Work¬ 
bench 3. 

What is the attraction of Amiga- 
Guide? Well, it has the advantage of 
being an Amiga standard and has gain¬ 
ed wide acceptance with Amiga devel¬ 
opers. It is, of course, totally compatible 
with the Amiga operating system and 
has an interface to ARexx (so it can be 
used with any application having an 
ARexx port), as well as being easy to 
interface with for application program¬ 
mers. There lies its great advantage 
over other hypertext systems even com¬ 
mercial ones such as Hyperbook; there 
isn’t any non-standard interface or high 
price tag. However, creating your own 


Amiga Guide 


documents in AmigaGuide can be 
more difficult without specialised tools. 

AmigaGuide consists of sev¬ 
eral parts; a database viewer (an 
AmigaGuide hypertext document is 
called a “database”), documentation, 
and developer information and 
examples. We won’t go into developing 
AmigaGuide applications here, but we 
will cover the most likely ways you 
might meet AmigaGuide. 

Documentation 

Many programs (particularly Share¬ 
ware and PD software) these days 
come with AmigaGuide format instruc¬ 
tion files. AmigaGuide is obviously a 
very useful format for instruction files, 
as most programs have functions 
which break down very well into sub¬ 
sections. The proper AmigaGuide ter¬ 
minology for these subsections is 
“documents”; there can be more than 
one document stored in any database. 



Edmund Dumbill explains how 
a simple but powerful program 
has become a favourite with 
Amiga programmers. 


The structured format of the text al¬ 
lows you to arrive at the information 
you need quickly, without wading 
through unwanted details. Many pro¬ 
grams also use AmigaGuide as on¬ 


line help; providing a use forthe HELP 
key. Pressing the HELP key while the 
mouse is over a gadget or menu item 
causes AmigaGuide to load the rel¬ 
evant section of the documentation. 


IB 



SDO 



□ | KingCON compared to CON 

I E3|i& 

Contents ||| 

liilililliilll 

111 Help | Retrace j: 

Browse < | Browse > | 



SD1 


Ram_Disk 
V 


Prefs 


err.rs s 


Shell 6 (wor 


The WB2.0 console-handler - COM: - i.s really good, but It lacks some 
very handy features that make life easier If you use It a lot. 

KlngCOM (or KCOM) Is a replacement that behaves EXACTLY like COM, but It 
also adds these Important features: 

# F11ename comp let 1onl . You just type the first letters of a filename, 
press the TAB-key, and - voll£! - the rest of the name Is filled 

In for you (or you will be presented a list of alternative files that 
you can choose from). This makes typing MUCH faster and minimizes 
frustrating misspellings. KlngCOM has many options that let you control 
operation of this function. Maybe you prefer It window-oriented, 
UMIX-llke or something else. 

DOS-commands and devlcenames can be completed In a similar way. 

Some of you might say that the Shell should provide this function 
Instead, but since all editing Is managed by the console-handler 
anyway, this Is only natural. And as a "sIdeeffeet", the filename- 
completion will be available AT ALL TIMES - not only when you are 
stand 1ng at the she11-prompt. 

# Revlew-bufferl . A scrollbar In the right wlndowborder lets you browse 
through all text that has been output to the window at any time. 

(Very useful when your compiler spits out ten pages of errorl1stIngs.) 
The buffer can be turned on and off, and saved to a separate file. 

# Intuitlon-menusl that give you a quick access to the features mentioned 
above. You can control the size of the window, clear It etc. 

# Default settings can be stored In an env1ronment-var l ab l el . 

# Jump-scro l II option, which Increases output speed a lot. 

# The console window can be 1conlf1edj and put on the Workbench 

as an Applcon. The window also has a special Icon In the titlebar 
t o qulc kly lconlfy It. 

# Asynchronous typeaheadj . If you want to type In the next command while 
watching the output from the previous one. 


t:* 


# Workbench loondropj Is supported. 


A 

V 

<\>\*3 


Reading an AmigaGuide document. 


108 


AUI • JULY 1994 

















































































AUI Mentor 



Libraries 

AmigaGuide is also used for docu¬ 
menting shared libraries, such as those 
that make up the Amiga’s operating 
system. Using AmigaGuide and its 
powerful cross-referencing, a program¬ 
mer can have access to full on-line 
documentation of library functions, and 
at the click of the mouse, to the rel¬ 
evant language header files too. 
AmigaGuide provides a cross refer¬ 
encing system that allows you to cross 
reference between many different files 
and link them all together. A utility is 
also available which will scan C pro¬ 
gram files and build a one document 
database with the names of all struc¬ 
tures and function definitions in but¬ 
tons, and links the buttons to the rel¬ 
evant parts of the C source files. With¬ 
out doubt, AmigaGuide is a powerful 
tool for programmers and users alike. 

Hypertext 

AmigaGuide is suitable for other, more 
general, hypertext applications, but as 
yet has not been applied very much in 
that area. One possible reason for this 
isthat creating AmigaGuide databases 
is not always easy and requires quite 
a lot of thought to structure it logically; 
and there aren’t many tools available 
to help database creation. 

Structure 

The underlying structure of an 
AmigaGuide database is a collection 
of documents. A document is a section 
of text (under Workbench 3 other 
datatypes can be used too). Within the 
document text there are buttons which 
lead to other documents. The buttons 
are typically highlighted words which 
indicate the subject of some related 
documents. The structure is as simple 
as that! Buttons need not only be links, 
they can be one of the following types: 

1 links to other documents (as above) 

2 links that open new document 
windows or close them 

3 links that execute ARexx macros or 
command strings 

4 links that execute an AmigaDOS 
command 

5 links to a Workbench 3 supported 
datatype (WB3 only) - for example 
an ILBM picture or 8SVX sample file. 

Every database has a MAIN 
document. This document is the one 


that is displayed first when the 
database is viewed normally, and 
presents the top level of the database. 
It is quite often the “contents page” of 
the database, although each document 
can be configured to use a separate 
contents page. Every document has 


two other properties: a name and a 
title. The name is used by AmigaGuide 
to locate the document within the 
database, and so must be unique. The 
title is what is displayed in the title bar 
of the database viewer when that docu¬ 
ment is being viewed. A document 
need not be stored in the same data¬ 
base as the one it is called from if 
cross-referencing is used (see be¬ 
low). 

AmigaGuide also treats plain 
text files as documents; obviously they 
have no links or actions in them, but 
this is very useful - consider referencing 
program source code. 

That is the basic structure of a 
database, which is essentially quite 
simple. However, there is enough 
power - especially with the AmigaDOS 
and ARexx execution commands - for 
quality hypertext presentations. 

How to use the AmigaGuide 
document reader with an AmigaGuide 
database, navigating your way around 
it is very simple. Load the database 
into either AmigaGuide or MultiView. 
AmigaGuide databases usually have 
either “.guide” or “.hyper” as filename 
suffixes. You will see a window open 
containing the main document text, 
with various buttons within the text. 
Simply click the left mouse button on a 


button in the window to move to the 
linked document or perform the action 
attached to the button. If you want to 
display the document in a new window, 
hold down the shift key at the same 
time. There are various gadgets in the 
window which are not part of the text, 
but allow you to do other things: 
“Contents” displays the table of con¬ 
tents for the database, “Index” the 
index page, and “Help” the help page. 
“Retrace” takes you back a document. 
The “Browse” gadgets allow you to 
move sequentially through the docu¬ 
ments regardless of the links. 

The menus provide access to 
further functions: there is a facility for 
marking text for use in the clipboard, or 
for printing. Also you are allowed to set 
a “bookmark”, which remembers the 


current document for reference later. 
The “Find text...” menu-item allows you 
tosearchwithinadocumentforparticular 
character sequences; these are then 
displayed as buttons and you can choose 
which one you want to view. 

Cross 

Referenci ng 

Also included within the menu options 
in AmigaGuide is the “Find docu¬ 
ment...” option. This searches through 
the current database and all the 
databases AmigaGuide “knows about” 
to find the document. Note that this 
function looks for the document name 
(see above) not the title. So how does 
AmigaGuide “know about” other docu¬ 
ments? Well, document paths can be 
specified explicitly in button links, but 
what if that is not the case? This is 
where cross referencing comes in. It is 
possible to have a list of document 
locations (database name, and line 
number) resident in memory, so 
AmigaGuide knows where to look for 
documents it can’t find otherwise. This 
allows the subdivision of databases and 
makes a large number of documents 
easy to handle. The commands 
LoadXRef and ExpungeXRef provide 
facilities for adding these lists into 
memory and removing them. A par- 



Button types available in AmigaGuide. 


ticularly useful use of the cross-refer¬ 
encing system is in referencing the 
Commodore “Autodocs” (Amiga library 
documentation) and “Includes” (C lan¬ 
guage header files). This allows you, if 
you have the Autodocs, to have an 
integrated on-line programmers’ ref¬ 
erence manual, with access to the 
required information just a few mouse- 
clicks away (You need the Autodocs in 
hypertext format first). The cross-ref¬ 
erence file necessary and Autodoc-to- 
AmigaGuide conversion utility are in¬ 
cluded in the AmigaGuide developers’ 
distribution. With a little effort, cross- 
referencing could be used to great 
effect to integrate a large amount of 
information, and is another source of 
AmigaGuide’s power. 

Dynamic Node 

Up until now, we have assumed that 
the AmigaGuide database was a file. 
This is usually the case but it is possible 
for applications to interact with 
AmigaGuide. Such an application is 
called a “dynamic node host”. A 
dynamic node host is capable of 
producing documents in real time, and 
requesting AmigaGuide to display 
certain documents. This gives a great 
power to AmigaGuide for on-line help, 
and also opens up the possibility of an 
AmigaGuide window forming part of 
an application’s user interface. For 
instance, if a user presses the “HELP” 
key while the mouse pointer is over a 
gadget, the application needs only to 
send a message to AmigaGuide to 
ask it to display the document, in that 
application’s help database, which 
explains the function of that gadget. 

_ ARexx _ 

AmigaGuide has a simple but powerful 
ARexx interface. This means that from 
ARexx a script can request Amiga¬ 
Guide to open and close new win¬ 
dows, load documents, and quit. Con¬ 
sider the power of this: for programs 
which have no on-line help but do 
support the execution of ARexx scripts, 
you could define ARexx scripts which 
load relevant documents into Amiga¬ 
Guide, add these scripts into the pro¬ 
gram’s menu, and suddenly your ap¬ 
plication has on-line help! ARexx can 
also perform some of the functions 
available to dynamic node hosts (to do 
with cross-referencing). 

Conclusion 

We’ve looked at the main uses of 
AmigaGuide in documentation, the 
structure of AmigaGuide databases, 
cross-referencing between Amiga¬ 
Guide documents, and the powerful 
facilities for interfacing with applica¬ 
tions and ARexx. Behind the simple 
user-friendly approach of AmigaGuide, 
there is a great deal of power and 
potential. AUI 


JULY 1994 • AUI 


109 































AUI Me ntor 


PROGRAMMING 



C alculations, especially those involving 
floating point numbers, are often time 
consuming and Basic programmers, for 
instance, fequently find that such calcula¬ 
tions cause unacceptable slowness. Luckily it’s usu¬ 
ally possible to improve the execution times of particu¬ 
lar routines by performing any difficult or otherwise 
time-consuming calculations in advance and we will 
look at a typical scenario. 

Let’s suppose you were writing a stopwatch 
program that was to count seconds and display a 
second hand moving around a clock face. With every 
elapsed second the program would want to undraw 
the current second hand position, calculate the new 
position of the second hand, and then draw the new 
second hand position. 


seconds so a statement such as... position=seconds 
MOD 60 would be appropriate. A typical plan for a 
routine to perform second hand updating might there¬ 
fore look something like this: 

UpdateSecondHand: 

Undraw the current second hand position 

seconds=seconds+1 

position=seconds MOD 60 

Draw the new second hand position 

Return 



The Amiga can calculate this easily, but you can make it better 


The basis of such a program would be simple: 
Updating a second’s variable would just mean adding 
one to it using a statement like seconds=seconds+1. 
Relating the number of elapsed seconds to the posi¬ 
tion of the second hand would also be straightforward 
since it is just necessary to remember that after 60 
seconds have elapsed the position of the second hand 
will be the same as the starting point (twelve o’clock). 

Basic’s Mod function could be used to get the 
position of the second hand after any number of 


Getting such a subroutine executed every 
second is also nottoo much of a problem. HiSoft Basic, 
for example, provides a conditional Gosub form that 
can be used to force a subroutine to be executed at 1 
second intervals like this: 

ON TIMER(I) GOSUB UpdateSecondHand 

Now all this is fine until you get to the point of 
actually calculating the position of the second hand. 


Paul Overaa 
explains whv a 
little advance 
calculation is often 
vital to a program. 

This obviously has to be able to be displayed in any 
one of 60 positions so it is necessary for the program 
to work out where those positions are on a given clock 
face display. 

Since a complete sweep of a circular clock face 
involves 360 degrees it is not too hard to figure out that 
each new second hand position must be 6 degrees 
further on from the last. This information, coupled with 
details of the size of the circle being used to represent 
the clock face is (with a little trigonometry) sufficient to 
pin-point the locations of all of the second hand ‘resting’ 
positions. Although the display position calculations are 
easy enough to do they still add quite an overhead to the 
overall execution time of the routine. 

There is a very simple trick that can eliminate 
this type of time penalty - you just do the calculations 
in advance. In the example we’ve used I would pre¬ 
calculate the locations on the circumference repre¬ 
senting those second hand positions using an x() and 
y() array-based loop like this: 

FOR i=-90 to 270 STEP 6 


x((i+90)/ 

6)=2*RADIUS*COS(i*DEGREES_TO_RADS) 

y((i+90)/ 

6)=2*RADIUS*SIN(i*DEGREES_TO_RADS) 

NEXT i 

Not exactly obvious code I know, but if you 
work out the (i+90)/6 expressions using steps of 6 
within the -90 to 270 degree loop range you’ll see that 
they just correspond to the numbers 0,1,2, 3,4...60. 
In other words, the right-hand-side terms provide a 
crafty way of specifying the x() and y() array subscripts 
whilst the left-hand-side expressions produce the 
second hand position co-ordinates which get stored in 
the array. The result is that for any value of i from 0 to 
60 the array elements x(i) and y(i) end up holding the 
x/y co-ordinate data for the outer-most point of the i’th 
second hand position. 

By having this pre-calculated data available 
the time consuming calculation portions of a display 
routine would be completely eliminated. Another ben¬ 
efit is that the calculations only ever have to be 
performed once (if the calculations were made as part 
of the hand updating routine whilst the ‘clock’ was 
running then a repeat calculation would be made each 
time the second hand re-visited particular second 
hand locations). 

The idea in general then is always to look at 
any real-time calculations being made in your pro¬ 
grams and ask yourself whether they could in fact be 
either completely, or partially, carried out in advance. 
Often you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the time sav¬ 
ings that even relatively small code rearrangements 
can make. AUI 


no 


AUI • JULY 1994 



















































AUI Mentor 



INFO 


Macro Interface 
Routines continued... 

Paul Overaa rounds up his ‘portable 
ARexx macro’ discussions with details 
of the interface routines for another 
text-oriented ARexx package. 


O ver the last two issues of AUI 
we’ve been talking about 
writing ‘portable’ ARexx 
code and, as an example, 
provided a text block conversion 
macro that is able to replace phrases 
such as ‘2.00 inches’ with the equiva¬ 
lent centimeter measurement (5.08 
cms in this case). Last month we 
dealt with the interface routines which 
provided the links to Softwood’s Fi¬ 
nal Copy II wordprocessor. This 
month we’ll show you what the 
equivalent SAS se editor routines 
look like. 

The aim, in case you missed 
the earlier instalments, is to create an 
ARexx macro in which the main part of 
the code, ie the bit that does all the real 
work, contains no ‘application program 
specific’ instructions. All the product 
specific stuff is bundled together using 
a set of routines whose sole job is to 
provide a link, ie an ‘interface’, be¬ 
tween the macro itself and ARexx prod¬ 


uct which uses it. The benefit here is 
that to get the macro running with 
another ARexx application you only 
need to re-write the interface routines, 
not the whole macro. 


The listing this month shows 
how we implemented a set of SAS 
se editor interface routines and you’ll 
see that all the routines needed by 
the original conversion macro 


GetStartLineNumber(), 
GetEndLineNumber(), GetTextLine() 
and so on, have been implemented. 
By inserting these in place of the origi¬ 
nal Final Copy II routines it was possi¬ 
ble to get the example macro working 
with the se editor without making any 
changes at all to the main macro code. 

Now I don’t want to kid either 
myself or you that this technique is a 
general panacea for all ARexx macro 
portability problems because it isn’t. 
For a start this approach usually 
means that macros take twice as 
long to write in the first place. But it is 
useful for anyone who tends to write 
and use large ARexx macros and the 
larger the macros become, the more 
important the approach is likely to 
be. The main thing however is to be 
aware of the overall principles BE¬ 
FORE you end up writing masses of 
ARexx code that may, in latter years, 
have to be completely re-written for 
another package. AUI 


r -7 

/* Example interface routines for the SAS se editor 7 

GetStartLineNumber: 

‘BM B’ 

options results 
‘GL’ 

return result 

/*-7 

GetEndLineNumber: 

‘BM E’ 

options results 
‘GL’ 

return result 

/*- 7 

GetTextLine: 
options results 
‘GT’ 

return result 

/*-7 


/*- 7 

DeleteText: 

‘DE’ 

return 

/*- 7 

MoveToNextLine: 

‘NL’ 

return 

/*- 7 

MoveToBlockStart: procedure 
parse arg start finish 
‘BM B’ 
return 

/*- 7 

InsertTextLine: procedure 
parse arg text$ 
text$ 
return 

/*- 7 


Listing 1: Another example set of interface routines - this time for the SAS se editor. 


JULY 1994 • AUI 


111 












































Woo(worths 
hypernart 



Value of shares available 
DUROX LTD equity = 

The Bears equity = 

Div: Week 0 paid $1,98 

$ Share novenent 


$1,480,000 

$0 

$0 



STAKEOUT 



The marks awarded to each PD disk 
are based purely upon its own merits 
and, of course, our personal views. 
Value for money and reliability are 
also taken into account as well as 
features and quality of the software. 


Compatibility 

The PD disks reviewed in this issue 
were tested on an A500 with 
Kickstart 1.3. Please check with 
your PD supplier that the disks you 
are ordering are compatible with 
your Amiga. Amiga Plus, 600, or 
1200 owners should be aware that 
roughly half of the software in the 
public domain will not work with 
Kickstart 2 or 3. Always ask first. 



r 

Shareware? 

All freely distributable software 
comes under the rather deceiving 
umbrella of “public domain”. Quite 
a lot of this software is, in fact, 
shareware. Shareware means that 
if you like the software, or use it 
regularly, the author will request a 
reasonable donation from £5 to £20. 
There is usually a note on the disk 
informing you if the software is 
Shareware or regular PD. Whether 
or not you send a donation to the 
author depends totally upon your 
level of conscience and morals. 
Remember, if you send a donation 
to the author, you may receive an 
updated version of the software. 
Even if you don’t receive an up¬ 
date, you will have given the author 
the incentive to continue contribut¬ 
ing into the public domain. 


CE9 


INSIDERS 


PTTTT1 

Disk GA190 
Magnetic Fields 

This does sound a rather shady disk. 
I thought it might involve Freemasons 
or other secretive acivity but it doesn’t. 
It is all to do with stock market trading. 
It can be played as either a one or two 
player game. Number one plays the 


Influence on business 
Trading _ Deflation 

Nkt share 


oolworths ? 


2 1 



1 

11234567891 

10 


Stock market, and player two, an in¬ 
vestor. 

If you are playing the stock mar¬ 
ket, the object is to better your opponent 
by owning and controlling as many com¬ 
panies as possible, thereby becoming 
the richest player. If you are playing the 
investor then you have to get rich by 
investing (what else?). 

This would be a good game to 
get if you were studying business and 
finance. I am afraid I found it all rather 


To BORROW 

To REPRY 0/D 

BUY shares 

SELL shares 

tedious. This isn’t the type of game 


that you want to play after a long hard 
day at work. It doesn’t help you relax. 
You have to use your brain for this and 
most people won’t want to play some¬ 
thing as intense. But they do say that 
“Business is the biggest game in town.” 
And the Stock Exchange is where you 
can really get rich, so maybe it’s worth 
a look to get in 
some practice 
for the real thing.' 


aoooooao 


ooooeeio 

jtj 

* *!* *(, 



tt 'Mr 


m 

* V ** 4 

;V v*. 

, 1 

• 

• 

* 


m * 

i 

96 % ^ Deluxe Galaga __ 


Those of you who overlooked last 
month’s issue missed something truly 
special on the AUI Cover Disk. Deluxe 
Galaga is without doubt the greatest 
Galaxians clone ever made. The best 
thing to do is to order a back issue 
now, or if you have a CD32 or CDTV 
play it on this month’s Amiga CD! Disk. 

What it boils down to is that 
Galaxians is just souped up Space 
Invaders. But so much work has gone 
into this game and it looks so polished, 
it’s terrific fun to play. If you played 
Deluxe Pac Man by the same author, 
also on a past AUI Cover Disk, you will 
know what to expect. 

Galaga will work on any Amiga 
and there are enhanced versions for 
people who have 020/030 machines. 

The most fun aspect of the 


Disk 3035 
17 Bit 

game is the numerous extras you can 
collect to enhance your ship. These 
range from simple speed ups to triple 
shot and rapid fire. There are also 
some odd extras like a scanner which 
projects a field in front of your ship. If 
an invader swoops in low and runs into 
your field, he joins you at your side, 
firing when you do. 

There is also a great bonus 
screen in the shape of a meteor storm. 
Make your way through the increa¬ 
singly busy cloud of rock shaped gra¬ 
phics collecting points as you go. If 
you get hit by one you keep the amount 
of points you collected. This game 
could easily be Licenceware and the 
author could reasonably charge up to 
£10 for it. As it is it is, being free, no PD 
collection should be without it. 



I AUI • JULY 1994 


































AUI PD Stakeout 



SUPERLEAGUE MANAGER 
CLICK ON CLUB TO MANAGE 


SWANSEA 


BRISTOL 


CARDIFF 


ROCHDALE 


GRIMSBY 


TOTTENHAM 


WREXHAM 


MORE CHOICE 


i»usteniffiffilfl3lpn Lnulation Screen Phone Dfl 


©J 

OS 

OY 

©D 

OU 


81-Oct-93 

el Lodberg 
aniel Bloch & co. 

sion 1.9 


nd suggestions to! 
+47 22388949 (V32) 
cala.adsp.sub.org 
to! NIL! 

it is NOT free ««« 
in cash or 258 NOK 
Int. Postal M.O.! 
T.Lodberg, Rilotveien 18, N-8384 OSLO, NORWAY 


protocol 

V 




Super League 
Manager II 


Disk PG232 
Pathfinder PD 


Ncomm 3. 


Southern Software 

If you own a modem you are going to 
need some software to make it work. 
Some of the best Amiga comms soft¬ 
ware is PD. One of the most popular 
comms programs is Ncomm. Version 
2.0 Had been around for some years, 
and people have been awaiting an 
update ever since last year. It event¬ 
ually arrived in October. 

From the outside, V3 looks 
almost the same as V2. There were, in 
fact, a lot of bugs in V2 and around 30 
fixes have been implemented. 

The majorchange involves the 
upgrade to OS 2.0/3.0. Nico Francois’s 
excellent Reqtools.library is also sup¬ 
ported. Ncomm 3.0. is now Shareware 
as opposed to PD. This version is 
usable but you are unable to save the 
Config and Macro key settings. You 
will have to register 
it if you want these | T • ] 

functions back! ^ ^ 


The last version of Super League Manager 
(SLM) was 1.26. It must have been a 
popular program to warrant an upgrade. 
The main improvement is in the screen 
displays which have received a total over¬ 
haul. They all have new 3D moving but¬ 
tons. There are also better load and save 
game requesters. The old ones didn’t allow 
you to save to different disks. The most 
requested improvement was an editor for 
team and player names to allow you to 
customise the game. 

It is a very simple game with very 
few decisions to make. I don’t really like 
football all that much but found myself 
playing this for hours. 

When you have chosen all your 
players it is then time to play a match. The 
match in progress screen is very simple. All 
it displays is the current score and the time. 
This ticks away quickly and information on 
the game appears as it goes along. I really 
didn’t know what the attraction was with 
managing games, and I still don’t. All I do 
know is that this one is addictive. 


EXETER 


Anyone who liked the game Nitro from 
Psygnosis, which came out quite a few 
years ago now, will love this. Why? 
Because it’s almost the same that's 
why! Even the graphics are similar right 
down to the cars. 

Some people may have seen 
this before in the PD lists, but this new 
turbo version is faster and plays bril¬ 
liantly. I found Nitro extremely difficult 


Disk 3047 
17 Bit 


to play because the cars were so awk¬ 
ward to control. High Octane plays in 
much the same way but things do not 
zip along at such a lightning pace, they 
are more smooth. The programming is 
also very professional even though 
AMOS was used. It just goes to show 
that software programmed with this 
package can approach the standard of 
some commercial games. 


High 

Octane 

Turbo 



Big Time 
Sensuality 


Disk 17 Bit 

This excellent A1200 only demo comes 
on two disks and contains a brilliant re¬ 
mix of Bjork's Big Time Sensuality (the 
original album version, not the single 
version). This is accompanied by some 
wonderful 1200 effects such as AGA 
plasma swirls. It seems to be the in thing 
to have scaling in modern demos and 
this is no exception. Who knows if it is 
real time scaling or just an animation? 
It’s not really important because the end 
results are impressive, and that’s all that 
matters in a demo. 


Vark's Utils No. 4 


Disk 3058 
17 Bit 

Where The Assassins seem to be 
THE people who are known for com¬ 
piling small PD games, Vark (whoever 
he orshe is) is known forcompiling PD 
utilities. 

Vark has managed to cram 
twenty seven utils onto one disk. They 
are all crunched and most of them 
have documents. 

If you keep up-to-date with utils 
on bulletin boards, then the programs 
on this disk may seem a little old. 
Disksalv2 is rather old but it hasn’t 
been updated for a while so it’s still the 
latest version. Other well known utils 
include BigAnim, Virus Checker V6.34, 


pre- ms 


n»W9«WllWnKlEllEI 

RI200Run • flllows older files to run on RGB's, 

RUTH ■ Sheas infornation about you- Rniga, 

Badfomat • flakes use of R/H Error Disks. 

Bigflnjn - Vies large anins off of disk. 

CheckDrive • Cbeckdrive stated for Viruses. 

CheckOrive.doc - Docs for above. 

DiskSalv2 • Latest version of Disk Recovery, 

Di$kS3lv2.0oe ■ Docs for above, 

EditKeys - Edit kernaps, assign F keys. 

EditKsys.doc - Docs for above, 

Enbedder - Brother fix it Prog for fiGfl's. 

Erbedder.Ooc - Docs for above, 

FD-BICS • Create scroll/ nsg in Bootblock. 

FD-BlCS.Doc • Docs for above, 

To view any files, first type folloved by the nane of the file, 

= Tins Henu = = = 

-_ i 

|l> 


and Powertracker. There are a few 
utils which I had never heard of. These 
include, an AGA version of QuickG rab, 
BadFormat, which makes use of disks 
with RAA/ errors, and Recover, which 
retrieves recently deleted files. 



JULY 1994 * AUI 


113 















































































































AUI PD Stakeout 





FORTY THIEVES 


Disk G042 
Roberta Smith 


People who use computers at work 
always seem to be busy using them. 
But are they always doing what they 
are supposed to? People who use 
PC’s will probably have Windows 
running. In which case they probably 
have access to a game called Soli¬ 
taire, sometimes known as Patience. 
This game is built into Windows and 
is a worryingly addictive card game. 
The Macintosh has something very 
similar and that is what is on this 
disk. 

It is played with two packs of 
cards. The aim of the game is to place 
all 8 suits into piles, in order, at the top 
of the screen starting with the aces. As 
in both the MAC and PC versions, 


Icon Editor 


Disk U810 
NBS 

I have never really had the time to 
create my own icons. Or is that “couldn’t 
really be bothered”? The only time I 
have used IconEdit on the Workbench 
was to change a particular icon from a 
project icon to a drawer icon because 
I liked the graphic. This new editor 
contains a lot of useful features. And I 
may just be tempted to use it. 

There is a large window in 
which your icon can be edited. This 
has a scroll bar along each side for 
really huge images. You can load other 
icons into the package and also import 
IFF pictures in to edit. If the icons are 
too big then they can be scaled down 
to any size. There is also a zoom 


cards are moved by simply clicking on 
a card and dragging it to its destina¬ 
tion. There is a very good hint feature 
built in. When enabled the mouse 
pointer will give you a thumbs up sign 
when you place it over a card that is 
usable. If you use an Amiga at work 
then this is the game to bring into the 
office, but don’t 
get caught! 


LESSONS 


Disk 3026 
17 Bit 

This cute little animation reminds me of 
the short cartoons they someti mes show 
on BBC2. These are usually made in 
Belgium or Norway and last about 3 
minutes. This one lasts two and a half 
minutes, comes on one disk and has no 
sound. This might sound pretty awful 
but it is quite amusing to watch. 

The small character is very 
crudely drawn and the outline of him 
moves with every frame. This reminds 
me of the cartoon Rhubarb in which 
the same thing happened. 


The story line is quite straight¬ 
forward. Bob (the character’s name) 
dreams of flying and so tries various 
things to achieve this. He ties himself 
to a rocket, and to a lawnmower to get 
up enough speed, but nothing seems 
to work,. In the end he fails. The ani¬ 
mation is good, and the jerky style 
works very well. 


This three diskdemo isfrom the same 
people who brought out one of the 
first AGA demonstrations, Team Hoi. 
There are some nice new effects. The 
first is a travel through a maze. Yes, I 
know you probably have seen this 
before, but this time you can control 
the size of the screen. The bigger the 
size the more jerky the journey. 

The next part involves a small 
man on a jet pack flying over the 
surface of a planet. The effect is quite 
stunning, it is a bit like the game 
Space Harrier only more impressive. 
The texture mapped surface makes 


Disk NBS 

you quite dizzy. 

There then follows a quick 
slideshow. The pictures themselves are 


quite good although it’s the varying 
screen wipes that make you go, Wow! 

What follows next can be de¬ 
scribed as a bit of soft porn depending 
on your point of view. Two very 
pixilated, very undressed young la¬ 
dies are displayed. They are then 
rotated around and certain bits are 
then zoomed in on. 

This is an excellent demo, 
which is let down by a slow disk 
loading process and AGA only status. 
It is well present ed though and con - 
tains some exc- Ari -IT 
ellent music. 


function to add fine detail to your im¬ 
age. 

The version of Icon Editor on 
this disk is a full working version. No 
functions have been disabled. “Oh 
great!” you say, “I’ll buy one!” It is 
shareware though and the author has 
made life difficult for you. When the 
program starts, two requesters ap¬ 
pear which stay on the screen for thirty 
seconds each. This is highly annoying 
and rightly so! It will encourage people 
to buy a full 
working copy. 


mm 1 2 x Nornal 

Icon Inage 



01 Nornal | [ 

aiiWiiiii 

Edit Hode 

C" Draw 

J Flood Fill 


IEv4.6a © 1989-93 Peter KIEM " “Reg #896 |S 


IE programed in Aztec C 5.2a by 

Peter Kien, 

15 Penfold St, 
Hillcrest, QLD 4118 
Australia 


114 


AUI • JULY 1994 


Hone Phone (07) 800-8459 
Internet kien@splat.paxnet.con.au 
FidoNet 3:640/304 










































































8 Ruswarp Lane, Whitby, 
Yorkshire Y021 1ND 
Tel/Fax: (0947) 600065 


*De£ta Pi So/ttvane 


AUTHORISED DEALER FOR ★ AMIGA ★ STAR ★ 


AMIGA ■ DISK DRIVES 


Amiga CD32 + Microcosm 

+ Chaos Engine.£249.00 

A500 Wild, Wierd & Wicked Pack ....£199.00 

A1200 Dynamite Pack.£329.00 

A1200 Dynamite Pack - 127Mb HDD 

Commodore On-site Warranty.£549.00 

A1200 Dynamite Pack - 209Mb HDD 
Commodore On-site Warranty.£609.00 


PRINTERS 


All printers include a parallel cable 

Canon BJ-IOsx Bubble Jet.£189.00 

Canon BJ-200 Bubble Jet 

+ Integral Sht Fdr.£259.00 

Star LC-100 Colour.£129.00 

Star LC24-100.£135.00 

Star LC24-20 Mk II.£165.00 

Star LC24-30 Colour.£209.00 

Star LC24-300 Colour.£249.00 

Star StarJet SJ-48 Bubble Jet.£219.00 

Star SJ-144 Colour Thermal.£359.00 

Panasonic KX-P2023 24-pin Mono 
+ Sht Fdr.£159.0 


Panasonic KX-P2123 24-pin Colour £199.00 


Zappo A500/600/1200 3.5" External Drivep&p£3£54.95 

A600 or A2000 Internal 3.5" Drives.p&p £2 £59.95 

A500 Internal 3.5" Drives.p&p £2 £54.95 

A600/1200 209Mb Internal Hard Drive.£279.00 

GVP 120Mb SCSI HDD for A1500/2000/3000/4000 . 

.£329.00 


MISCELLANEOUS 


A1200 Hawk RAM + Clock 2/4Mb RAM No FPU.Free p&p £129/199 

A1200 Hawk RAM + Clock 2Mb RAM + 33MHz 68882 FPU Free p&p £199.00 

A1200 Hawk RAM + Clock 4Mb RAM + 20MHz 68882 FPU Free p&p £245.00 

A1200 Hawk RAM + Clock 4Mb RAM + 40MHz 68882 FPU Free p&p £289.00 

GVP A1230-11 Accelerator 88030EC + 4Mb RAM.Free p&p £429.00 

Anti-Surge 4 x 13amp Socket Block.p&p £2 £18.95 

Sonmax Zip Stik Super Pro Joystick.p&p £2 £12.95 

The BUG Joystick.p&p £2 £12.95 


CHIPS 


Kickstart V2.04 ROM for A500/2000 ... Free p&p £17.95 

Kickstart VI .3 ROM for A500/2000 .Free p&p £15.95 

Super Denise 8373 (For New Graphics Modes). 

.Free p&p £19.00 

1 Mb Fat Agnus 8372.Free p&p £19.00 

CIA Chip 8520.Free p&p £7.95 


ALL PRICES INCLUDE 17.5% VAT 
CARRIAGE £7 

Prices subject to change without notice E&OE 



Amiga 1200 
Computer Combat / 
Innovations Pack 

Wordworth 2 + Print Manager 
Personal Paint 4 + Day by Day Planner 
Total Carnage + Brian the Lion + Zool 2 

£339 



(All A4000/1200 Prices include Home Maintenance) 


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MOST TITLES ARE DESPATCHED SAME DAY, 
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.22.99 

__22.99 

A320 Approach Trainer .19.99 

Addiction.19.99 

Air Buck* 1.2 .19.99 

Air Bucks 1.2...A1200 22.99 

Force Commander .19.99 

iro.18.99 

™yra.CD32 19.99 

A fred Chicken.A500/A1200/CD32 17.99 

A ien Breed Special Edition .10.99 

Alien Breed Special Edition.CD32 12.99 

Ambarstor . .19.99 

Amberstar.19.99 

Ambermoon.19.99 

Americon Gladiators .16.99 

Another World.12.99 

AiSian Knights.A1200 19.99 

Arcade Pool7Superfrdg.CD32 16.99 

Arcade Pool. 8.99 

Armourgeddon 2 .19.99 

Assassin Remix.9.99 


83*== 

Crystal Kingdom Dizzy . 

Cybe^Punk . 

Cyberspace. 

D Day.. 


Danaerou: 
DarkSun: 
Darkmere 


Deluxe Music Construction Set 2.6 .. 

Deluxe Paint 4 AGA. 

Demomaniac. 


Detroit. 

Diggers .A1200 

Disposable Hero.A500/CD32 

Dizzy Collection . 

Dizzy's Excellent Adventure. 

Dogfight- 


Dynabl 

Eltmani 


ablaster 


Award Winners 2.19.99 Dracuia .. 

B17 Flying Fortress (1 Meg).22.99 Dream Wi 

Bart Vi The World. .17.99 Dune . 

Batman Returns .16.99 D.m« 9 

Battle Isle'93 .17.99 

Battleloads.19.99 

Beasliord .. 17.99 

Beaver*.17.99 

Beneath Steel Sky.20.99 

Big Sea,...19.99 

Blade of Destiny .26.99 

Wastor...17.99 

Blob.17.99 

Bob's Bad Day .17.99 

‘ ' Blows (T Meg).18.99 

Blows Gajactic.18.99 


... CD32 


Elite 2 (Fronti^'“ZlA500 or CD32 

Entity... 

European Champions ... 

Eurojjean^Chompionship Football.CD32 


Ex0e 


ly Blows Gaiai 


Body Blows/Superfrog/Ove 


driv< 


_.._ 22.99 

Brian The Uon ..19.99 

' tal Sports Football.25.99 

ole £ Squeak.CD32 19.99 


FI 17A Nighthdwk Stealthfighter / 

FI 6 Combat Pilot. 

FI 7 Challenge... 


Caesar/Cohorf 2 .. 


California Games 2 .. 

Campai^2 j . 


.CD32 22.99 

.19.99 

.7.99 

.22.99 

...20.99 


Fantastic Dizzy. 

Fantastic Worfds . 

Fat Man. 

Ferarri Grand 
Fields of Glory 
Fire * 


Prix .. 


F rst Samurai + Mega-lo-Mania .. 
F ashbadc............. 

F ight Simulator 2 .. 

Eli-U. o n _i o 


.... j 6.99 F ighf Sim 2 Great Britain Scenery .. 

F ight Sjm 2 Hawaiian Scenery. 


Castles 2.19.99 

Castles 2 .A1200 22.99 

Castle Conguest .19.99 

Championship Manoger '94 Season Disk.7.99 

Championship Manager '93 (1 Meg).16.99 

Championship Manager Italia .16.99 

Championship Manager End-of-Season D/Disk 12.99 

Choos Engine-16.99 . .. ... 

Chaos Engine.CD32 19.99 Formula One Grand Prix 

Choos Engine 
Chuck Ro& . 


F ight Sim 2 Western European Tour. 

F ight Sim 2 USA No 7 Washington Scenery 
F ight Sim 2 USA No 9 Chicago Scenery ...... 

F ight Sim 2 USA No 11 Detroit Scenery . 

F ight Sim 2 USA No 12 New York Scenery 

Flight of the Intruder. 

Fly Harder.CD32 

c — 1 1 Champions 
r\ _ r ~.1_l n. 


Civilisation (1 Meg) .22.99 

Civilisation .....Z.A1200 25.99 

Claws.17.99 

Cohort 2. 19.99 

Combat Air Patrol .19.99 

Combat Classics 2.19.99 

Cool Spot.26.99 


G2. 

Genesis.CD32 

Genesia. 

Global Gladiators 
Globule 

Goal_._ 

Graham Gooch World Class Cricket_ 

Graham Gooch 2nd Innings. 

Graham Taylors Soccer Challenge 


17.99 

17.99 

25.99 

14.99 

10.99 

17.99 

22.99 

22.99 

17.99 

17.99 

21.99 

20.99 

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59.99 

64.99 

17.99 

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19.99 

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20.99 

19.99 

17.99 

19.99 

19.99 

17.99 

19.99 

22.99 

19.99 

12.99 

12.99 

17.99 

22.99 
.. 8.99 

10.99 

17.99 

11.99 

17.99 

24.99 

12.99 

22.99 

17.99 

17.99 

22.99 

19.99 

19.99 

20.99 

24.99 

26.99 

13.99 
13.99 
13.99 
13.99 
13.99 
13.99 

13.99 

10.99 

12.99 

19.99 

22.99 

17.99 

19.99 

19.99 

20.99 

19.99 

13.99 

19.99 

11.99 


Grand Prix Circi 


Grand Siam Collection. 

Gunship 2000 (1 Meg). 

Gunship 2000 ....CD32 

Hanna Barbara Animation 
Hannibal 


Harrier Jump Jet. 

Harpoon 121 ..... 

Horoquest 2-Legacy of Sorasil .. 


Hired Guns. 

History line 1914-18 (1 Meg) . 

Hoyle's Book of Games 3. 

Indiana Jones Fate of Atiantis Adv.. 

Innocent... 

International Manager - World Cup Edn . 

International Open Golf .CD32 

International Open Golf Championshi 

Jack Nicklaus dolf. . 

Jack the Ripper. 


Jet Strike 


John Barnes European Football 

John Barr.es European Football.CD32 

John Madden. 

Jurassic Pork... 

Jurassic Park.CD32 

Jurassic Pork.A1200 

Lost Vikings.CD32 

K240 (Non AGA)-Utopio 2.A500/CD32 

Kings Table .. 


Kings Quest 3 . 

Kings Quest VI.A500/A1200 

Kit Viscous . 

Knights of the Sky. 

Krusty's Super Fun House .. 

Lamborghini American Challenge. 

Laser Squad.;. 

Legends of Valour. 

Lemmings I "*'* 


Lemmings 2 The Tribes. 

Lemmings Double Pack . 

Leisure Suit Larry 3 . 

Links - the Challenge Of Golf .. 
Links Bountiful Course Disk. 


utii Devil cd32 

Loras or Chao*. 

Lords of 

Lost Vikir 


uuu fiuiqi .CD32 

Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge. 

lotus Trilogy...A500/CD32 

Lure of the Temptress . 

Magic Boy..,. 

Magician's Castle. 

Manchester United Europe ... 


Manchester United Pr 


19.99 

13.99 

16.99 

19.99 

22.99 

19.99 

29.99 

19.99 

22.99 

12.99 

17.99 

22.99 
.. 8.99 
22.99 

22.99 

10.99 
.. 6.99 

24.99 

19.99 

22.99 

17.99 

19.99 

17.99 
.. 7.99 

27.99 
.. 8.99 

20.99 

19.99 

12.99 
..8.99 

12.99 

10.99 

17.99 

19.99 

18.99 

19.99 

19.99 

22.99 

19.99 

10.99 

26.99 

17.99 

10.99 

17.99 

17.99 
.. 8.99 

24.99 

19.99 

17.99 

19.99 

13.99 

12.99 

12.99 

14.99 

19.99 
.. 8.99 

22.99 

19.99 
.8.99 

19.99 

12.99 

17.99 

19.99 
.8.99 



laughtyOnes . 

Jew Zealand Story 


Nick Faldo's Golf .. 


licky 2 . 17.99 

ligel Mansel;'s Wodd Champ.CD32 £19.99 

Nippon Safes.19.99 

No Second Prize (1 Meg).17.99 

No Second Prize. .CD32 14.99 

Oscar (All Versions).17.99 

Pang .6.99 

Parasol Stars.8.99 

Perfect General Data Disk .14.99 

Perihelion ..19.99 

PGA Tour Golf + .19.99 

Pinball Dreams & Fantasios .22.99 

Pinball Fantasies .Al206 19.99 

Pinball Fantasies.CD32 24.99 

Piracy ...Z..19.99 

Police Quest 1/2/3 ,.12.99 

Populous 2+.(See Excellent Games) 

Powermonger & Data Disk .12.99 

Premier Manager 2.17.99 

Prime Mover .17.99 

Prince of Persia .6.99 

Prophesy.19.99 

Pro Tennis Tour 2 - Jimmy Connors Great Courts 2 
8.99 

Psycho Killer.CD32 22.99 

Puggsy...19.99 

Qu«t for Glory 1 .12.99 

Qwok .. 9.99 

Qwak/Alien Breed Special Edition.CD32 17.99 

Ragnarok.ZZ.22.99 


A500/CD32 22.99 Super Methane Brothers .CD32 22.99 

-™rfrojj .17.99 


Surf Nin|as .. 
Stair- 




.CD32 19.99 

.CD32 19.99 

, no,care _ 22.99 

Syndicate Data Disk.13.99 

TZ (Coin Op). 19.99 

Tactical Manager - Eng or Scot or Itol.19.99 

Team 17 Collation VoT 1 .19.99 

Totris/7 Colors.16.99 

T ' “ 1 Cricket.16.99 


to oiue & The Grey.22.99 

..je Definitive Championship Manager.17.99 

The Greatest... 21.99 

The Kristal.6.99 

The Patrician.19.99 

Theatre of Death.19.99 

Town With No Name.CD32 22.99 

Tornado .22.99 

Total Carnage.18.99 

Traps & Treasures.19.99 

T • d _rmn in no 


Turning Points .22.99 

Two Towers.19.99 

U96 .22.99 

UFO.22.99 

Ultimate Body Blows.CD32 19.99 

Ultimate Pinball Quest.1999 

UMS Compilation.27.99 

Uncovered. 17.99 

Universal Monsters .17.99 


RainbawL... 

Reach for the Skies .19.99 

Reach out for Gold .. A500 or A1200 17.99 

.(See Lords of PcwerJ Western From 




Uridium 2.17.99 

Uridium 2.CD32 22.99 

.,8.99 
.9.99 
20.99 


Utopia 


jrCup .. 

-,-»r Cup 

H£Sr 

Second 
Secret 1 
Secret 1 


.16.99 

.. A500 or A1200 27.99 
.. 10.99 
.. 16.99 
.. 17.99 


Ryder Cup... CD32 20.99 

T-^3).A1200/CD32 20.99 

.. 18.99 

d Samurai.A500/A120019.99 

of Monkey Island (j Meg) .12.99 

Secret of Monkey island 2 (1 Meg) .24.99 

Sensible Soccer 92/93 . 16.99 

Sensible Soccer.CD32 19.99 

Shadow Lanas.8.99 

Silent Service 2. 12.99 

Silent Service 2.(See lords of Power) 

Sim City Deluxe .22.99 

Sim City + Populous.19 99 

Sim City/Lemmings.19.99 

SimUfe. . .A1200 22.99 

Simon The Sorcerer.22.99 

Simon The Sorceror.A1260 29.99 

Skidmarks .. 17.99 

Slicks.12.99 

Soccer Kid (Enhanced) .CD32 19.99 

Space Hulk.....22.99 

Space Legends Compilation_.......19.99 

Space QJestl .ZT.12.99 

Speedbafi 2.8.99 

Sports Masters Compilation.19.99 

Star Trek ...A1200 22.99 

Stadord .22.99 

S.U.B.19.99 

Surf Ninjas .A500 or A1200 17.99 

Streetfighter 2 .12.99 

Super Hero.19.99 

Super League Manager.17.99 

Super Methane Brothers.17.99 


item Front.. 

Wembley Rugby League A500/A1200.17.99 

Wembley International Soccer .CD32 19.99 

Wembley International Soccer.A1200 17.99 

Whales Voyage .A1200/CD32 19.99 

Wing Commander.A1200 22.99 

Winter Challenge.22.99 

Winter Olympics .22.99 

Winter Supersports.A500 or A1200 17.99 

Xmas Lemmings.12.99 

Yo Joe..:..17.99 


zZd 2 "". 

H*- 


.CD32 19.99 

.. A500/A1200 17.99 
... CD32 19.99 


2.A1200 17.99 


3.5" BLANK DISKS 


TDK/VER8ABM PRECISION 
i30XED; (BOXED; 
10W HiGH 10W 


LOW HGH 


7.99 9.99 6.49 7.99 5.99 6.99 


1450 1950 11.99 1550 
35.00 4750 26.00 3750 
654» 95.00 49.99 72.99 
125430 1904)0 94.99 141.99 
3004)0 4704)0 2)9.00 3504)0 
580.00 930.00 419.99 68000 
35’Jeqdel-Uos* 
0...J5O 20 850 50—17.50 


1099 1350 
2199 3250 

44.99 62.99 

83.99 121.99 

199.99 28750 

369.99 5504)0 

100—.35.00 


SPECIAL OFFERS 


inights 9.99 

L -- 8.99 

_,_ 12.99 

Chuck Rock 10.99 

Crazy Cars 3 12.99 

Godfathers Adventure Arcade Game 8.99 
Football Crazy Challenge 9.99 

Jack Niddous Unlimited Golf 12.99 

Jack Nicklaus Course Designer's Clip Art 
Yoluntel .. 


k Off 2 Final Whisdo 
k Off 2 Winning Tactics 


..IA1200 

Soccer Kid A500/A1200 
Sabre Team 

Seymour Goes to Hollywood 

Shadow Worlds 

Super Tetris 

Thunderstrike 

Wing Commander (1 Meg) 

Zool A500/A1200 

Zool 2 


Clip Art 
7.99 

7.99 

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EDUCATIONAL 


ADI English 
ADI French 
ADI Maths 


Alving Puzzles 
Better Maths 



or Typist 

lie Math 


_ j Dragons 

Maths Mania 
Noddys Big Adventure 
Paint 8. Create 
Picture Fractions 
Ploy Room 

"-«-*i with Trolls 


Reasoning wi 
Tidy the Hous 


7-10) 
3-8) 

5- 12) 

6 - 10 ) 

JUNIOR ADVENTURE 
Robin Hood 18+) 

The Three Boars (5-10) 

Wind in the Willows (6+) 

Wizard of Oz 

Scrooge (A Christmas Coral) (8+) 


JOYSTICKS/ACCESSORIES 




















































































































































































































































































































































































































































































AUI PD Stakeout 




— 


— 


Southern Shareware 


There are only two games on this disk 
but they are both excellent. Dogfight is 
essentially the game Biplanes (which 
was on a previous AUI Cover Disk) 
with a few extras added. It is a two 
player game in which you each control 
an aeroplane and the object is quite 
simple; to blow each other out of the 
sky! This is easierthan you think, as at 


first it is very difficult to play. 

If you cannot take off properly 
you will be reduced to a pile of scrap 
metal. When you eventually get into 
the air, you can have great fun zoom¬ 
ing around the screen destroying your 
opponent who probably hasn’t been 
able to get of the ground yet! 

The second game is even 


more fun. Called Scorched Tanks, it 
is based on a PD game on the PC 
called Scorched Earth. It is a tank 
warfare game where 2-4 players take 
turns buying weapons and shooting 
them at each other. Before you start 
the killing you have to buy your weap¬ 
ons and there are heaps from which 
to choose. To begin the killing you 


have to first select the angle of trajec¬ 
tory for your weapon to take. Then 
choose the speed, and then fire, and 
then, you hope, BANG! It is great fun 
to play and you get enormous satis¬ 
faction at seeing your opponenl 
melted away by 
a direct hit from ft • T | 


a fusion bomb! 



Disk G390/1 
NBS 


This is a result of about 10 months ol 
work from the author. It is quite sick in 
parts with lots of insectoid blood splat¬ 
tered around the play area. 

Your ants can be dispatcher 
from their base and can be mover 
along the ground until they run out o 
move points. These move points cai 
also be used to fire your bazooka s 
any enemy ants which happen to b» 
passing. When hit by yourflying rocke 
the enemy turns into what can only b 
described as dogmeat. You keep o 
doing this until you win. Ant Wars i 
well programmed in AMOS and cor 
tains some good animations. 


This funny little game has been influ¬ 
enced by a number of other games, 
but it is hard to pinpoint which one. 
There is definitely Lemmings in there 
somewhere because it involves de¬ 
stroying small insects, namely Ants. 
Although the graphics are a bit ama¬ 
teurish, the game isn’t all that bad. 


































AUI PD Stakeout 





You are in a comfortable tunnel like hall 
To the east there is the round green door 
You see : 

the wooden chest. 

Sandalf. Sandalf is carrying 
a curious map. 

Thor in. 

Gandalf gives the curious map to you. 

Thor in says " Hurry up 

X>OCOOOOOCOO<XX)COOOCC^^ 


000000 


SPECTRUM EMULATOR 


SUP 

000000 






Disk EM416 
Deltrax PD 



I didn’t own a Commodore 64 I am 
sorry to say. I did, in fact, invest in a ZX 
Spectrum. Not just any Spectrum, I 


had the best one, a rubber key 48K 
model. Not the inferior 16K one my 
friend had. I was amazed recently to 


A64 V3 


Disk 3072 A/B 17 Bit 



How could I review a ZX Spectrum 
emulator without trying out a one for 
the Commodore 64? Well, the 64 ver¬ 
sion is a little more complex. I think a 
ot of time and effort has gone into 
feveloping this program and you will 
leed an extra piece of hardware to 
ead in any games. This will connectto 
-our C64 Disk Drive. Then all you do is 
/pe, Load “$”,8,1 (bring back any 
lemories?) and this reads what is on 
le disk. 

Once the programs are in 


memory you can then save them to 
your hard drive to load up any time you 
want. There is also a built in program 
monitor which allows you to disas¬ 
semble and alter what is in memory. 

It is a truly first-rate package, 
but a bit pricey. The program comes 
on two disks without the cable and 
these are normal PD prices. If you 
want the cable, it is available from 
Deltrax PD at £54^9Mamafrgidifsa 
case of try 
before you buy! 


find a Spectrum Emulator in the PD. It 
didn’t come with any games. I was even 
more amazed when I found out that you 
could actually load games from tape 
into the emulator. You did this via the 
use of a sampler. Yes, a sampler! This 
cannot possibly work, I said to myself. 
There was only one way to find out! 

I got out my old WHSmith Data 
Recorder, (Yes, WHSmith actually 
used to make tape recorders or at 
least badge them. How many people 
remember that?) and plugged it into 
my sampler. I then loaded up the emu¬ 
lator, typed in LOAD put in my 


favourite game Quazitron, and pressed 
play. It worked! 

After loading is complete you 
can save the game to disk and load it 
up any time. Even the sound is emu¬ 
lated. I was worrying about copyright 
but it seems that it is OK to load games 
that you own, although there are lots 
floating around on different bulletin 
boards, and there’s even a Spectrum 
Emulator out for the PC. 

This one for the Amiga is well 
worth getting if your Spectrum has 
desintergrated as mine has, and you 
still long to play those old classics. 


f CONTACTS FOR PD REVIEWED IN THIS SECTION 

Deltrax PD 

NBS 

36 Bodelwyddan Ave 

U/F6 1 Chain Lane Newport 

Old Croydon 

Isle of Wight 

Clwyd LL29 9NP 

PO 30 5QA 


Tel: 0983 529 594 

Roberta Smith DTP (PD) 


190 Falloden Way 

Southern Shareware 

Hampstead Garden Suburb 

7 Stockheath Rd 

London NW11 6JE 

Havent 

Tel: 081 455 1626 

Hants P09 5HE 

Magnetic Fields 

17 Bit Software, 

PO Box 118 

2/8 Market Street 

Preston 

Wakefield 

Lancashire, PR2 2AW 

West Yorkshire WF1 1DH 

Jel: 0772 881190 

Tel: 0924 366982 j 

r If you have created a masterpiece and you would like it reviewed here ^ 

or if you own a Public Domain company and want to contribute new 

and interesting PD, please don’t hesitate to send it in. The address is: 


The PD Stakeout 

Amiga User International 

48/52 George Street, London W1H 5RF ^ 


JULY 1994 • AUI 


117 
























































OS 



Dear AUI, 

I have an Amiga A500 with a GVP 
HD8+ SCSI hard disk attached with 
5 Megs of RAM. I have a triple ROM 
switch with VI .2, VI .3 & V2.04 
Kickstarts. I also have a Power XL 
HD Drive. 

OK, now to my problem I use the 
XL drive for transfering files to and 
from work. (I work for IBM and use a 
PC Yuk ! all day.) It has got to the 
stage that I have so many files to 
xferthat I am using lots of HD floppys 
and it takes a long time to xfer the 
files from PC to floppy and then 
from floppy back to Amiga. 

What I want to do is attach a 160 
Meg SCSI Hard Disk formatted on 
the PC to the SCSI interface and get 
the Amiga to read the files to the 
Amiga’s Hard disk. 

I have asked lots of people and 
companies and some say “No way”. 
Some have suggested a PC emula¬ 
tor. I tried just attaching the disk to 
the Amiga last night and it didn’t 
even see it!! 

A friend of mine said that I need 
an entry in my mountlist to mount it 
and then just use Crossdos to read 
the files like from the HD drive? 

Can you tell me how to make a 
mountlist entry? Or another way to 
get the Amiga to recognise the PC 
disk and xfer the files. 

Thanx in advance 

Leonard Costa 
(via Email) 


Dear Leonard, 

I doubt very much if you will get a PC 
formatted drive to work on the Amiga, 
but it is worth trying. You make a 
mountlist in the same way as any other 
device that needs mounting. Look in 
the devs/mountlist file of your Work¬ 
bench disks for some examples. 

Here is a mountlist for one of my 
partitions when I was using the non 
automount system: 

*Name: * Device = hddisk. device 

* Unit =4 

Flags =0 

* Surfaces =6 

* BlocksPerTrack = 34 

* Reserved = 2 



Answer types 


^APPS^ 

_^S_ 

JJRINT^ 

COVERDjSK 


Programs etc] 

Video related 
problems 

Communications 


Programming 


Operating 

System 

Printer 

Problems 

Cover Disk 
problems 

For Anything 
Else 


* Interleave = 0 

* LowCyl = 2 

* HighCyl = 200 

Buffers = 30 

Stacksize = 4000 

GlobVec = 1 

* FileSystem = LFastFileSystem 

* DosType = 0x444F5301 

* 

You will need to check or edit eve¬ 
rything I’ve marked with a asterix (*) 

The first thing I would ask is why 
are you transferring so much data? 
You might like to think about that side 
of things first. Have you tried com¬ 
pressing the data with zip or Lha, both 
are available for the PC and Amiga. 

I use the A2091 in my A2000 and 
I have 6 SCSI devices attached, with¬ 
out any problems. Have you tried the 
GVP version of HDtoolbox to see if it 
can see the drive ? It is possible that the 
IBM drive may be a little ‘odd’ in how 
you connect it. That is a feature of 
some IBM equipment, as I’m sure that 
you are aware. Other than that you will 
have to carry on as you are I’m afraid. 



Dear AUI , 


Before putting my question to you, 
I would very much like to thank the 
AUI team for giving us such a high 
standard of magazine for so many 
years. People who are new to the 
Amiga range often fail to realise that 
the Amiga dates back to the mid 
80s. I have owned an Amiga since 



A4000, as Amos can 
only display 640X512 
Laced Screens with 
flicker, as it is not as 
yet AGA compatible? 
Again the A3000 is fine! 
Steve Bennett 
West Midlands 


day one and remember a time when 
there were less than twenty of us in 
the whole country. At that time I was 
very grateful when your magazine 
was released, even though it was 
very much geared to the US market 
then. May you continue for many 
years to come. 

OK, here’s my question: 

I now own a A4000-030 with a 
Microvitec Multisynch Monitor. 
When running any type of software 
on the machine, the display is al¬ 
ways offset. DPaint places its 
Screens in the top left hand corner 
of the monitor screen, but leaves a 
one inch gap on the right hand side. 
Amos is even worse. This opens the 
Editor screen in the right position, 
but when screens are opened for 
your programs, the screen display 
is placed up to two inches to the 
right. The problem is that Screens 
of a normal size: 

320X256 Lowres 

640X512 Hires 

do not fill the entire Screen display 
of the monitor. This makes the dis¬ 
play both messy and hard to work 
with. Answer printed in another 
magazine was to Boot Up using 
ECS, but it makes no difference. 
Changing the Overscan values also 
makes no difference. At the mo¬ 
ment I am developing software for a 
company in London and I need to 
display Screens in a way that I can 
fully understand how they will ap¬ 
pear on other monitors. At present I 
have had to put the Multisynch on 
one side and have had to revert 
back to my trusty old i 081. What’s 
the point of paying over four hun¬ 
dred poundsfora monitor that gives 
outstanding results, if I can’t use it? 

I have written (as many other 
Multisynch users have) to other 
magazines many times during the 
year, but as yet NO full answer has 
been given. They all state that this is 
a new problem to them and I just 
can’t believe that! 

I would be VERY, VERY grateful 
if you could solve this problem for 
me. This problem doesn’t even ap¬ 
pear when used with the A3000. 
Why not? 

Also (if I can sneak it in) do you 
know of a company that pro-duces 
an Anti-Flicker card/chip for the 


Dear Steve, 

I can understand your frustration with 
this problem. It is not easy to solve 
directly. The problem is that the moni¬ 
tor selection is now so freely 
configurable that it can be a devil of a 
job to get all modes agreeing with each 
other. 

The first this to do is to clear out all 
of the monitors in the monitors drawer, 
put them into the monitor storage fora 
while. 

Just put the driver for the monitor 
that you have in the monitor drawer 
(Multisync in your case). Also put 
VGAonly in the monitor drawer. 
VGAonly modifies some of the monitor 
settings to make the modes a little 
more compatible with VGA type moni¬ 
tors. 

The next thing that you have to do 
is go through the various display modes 
that you will be using and set them up 
for size, colour, etc. You will also have 
to set up the overscan preferences for 
each display mode setting. This is a 
long and tiresome job, but once done it 
should help you to get things in align¬ 
ment. 

I don’t know of a flicker fixer for the 
Amiga 4000, but the display hardware 
should be well up to the task of doing 
the job anyway. It means that Amos 
needs to be persuaded to use the new 
screen modes. There are a couple ol 
utilities that you might like to try. 
Prom 104. lha is the archive of a mode 
promotion utility that may help. There 
is also a new set of monitor driven 
called 1942setup.lha particularly fo , 
the 1942 monitor, but worth trying or 
other monitor setups. 

The last thing that may be of inter 
est is moned2.lha. This is a monitc 
editor, that enables you to tweak tb 
timings of the monitor drivers. B 
warned that some monitors do not lik 
having the wrong timings and this ca 
possibly do some damage. 

These programs should be availab 
from you PD supplier, CIX, or Ami Net 


118 


AUI • JULY 1994 






















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AUI Answers 





Dear AUI, 


Fairly recently I bought an Amiga 
A1200 and Deluxe Paint IV. 

As my main reason for the pur¬ 
chase was to generate graphics and 
titling for video, I was looking for¬ 
ward to using the impressive fonts 
that were supposed to be found on 
Artl and Art2. The Figure 8.13 on 
page 201 of the manual shows a 
fonts requester displaying SAP¬ 
PHIRE, SWISS, TIMES, and ZACK. 
Page 57 of the manual shows the 
same font requester and page 58 
mentions a font called ChiselScript 
and Karafonts; on my disks they 
just do not exist and when I asked 
Electronic Arts they were most un¬ 
helpful. 

Also, I find that after Deluxe has 
been in use for about 15 minutes, I 
cannot get any accuracy with the 1 
pixel brush, it jumps about 4 pixels 
either side of where I intend it to 
paint. At first I thought this could be 
the fault of the computer, or even 
the monitor, but I find that the PPaint 
program given away free in your 
February issue does not suffer from 
this fault. Your advice and com¬ 
ments would be most welcome. 

C.A.M.Aitchison 

Glasgow 

Dear C.A.M.Aitchison, 

Are you sure that you bought DPaint 
IV, you should have bought DPaint IV 
AG A for use with the A1200. 

Karafonts are on Disk 1, of the 
AG A version of DPaint, and need to be 
unarced. The installation utility will do 
this for you. I expect you answered 
“No” to a requester instead of “Yes”. I 
can’t help more than that as you have 
neglected to tell me your system setup! 
Iknowitisa 1200, but what else? Hard 
drive maybe? 

The other fonts you see are just 
what happen to be in the Amiga 
FONTS: directory. Sapphire is a stand¬ 
ard Workbench font, as is Times. Have 
a look on your Workbench fonts disk 
for a few surprises! 

I’m rather concerned about your 
other problem. It could be the Amiga 
still, as no two programs will use the 
Amiga system in exactly the same 
way. Strip your Workbench down to 
the bare minimum and see what hap¬ 
pens. It might be that a program that 
you have running in the background 
might be upsetting something. Per¬ 
sonally, I have found that the AG A 
version of DPaint IV is not as stable as 
it should be, but I ha ve used it for many 
hours without seeing the effect that 
you have noticed. If you do have the 
non AG A version of DPaint, then that 
will also explain why things are a bit 
unstable. 



Dear AUI, 

After months of researching com¬ 
puter systems: MAC, PC and AMIGA, 
guess which one I opted for. Got it in 
one! I did not even consider the 
Atari range - especially the dodgy 
Falcon. However, to my horror 
(glancing through Atari User), it 
seems that the Atari has the ability 
to “AVP” and the extremely versa¬ 
tile AMIGA cannot. What is AVP and 
why can’t the AMIGA do it? 

Second of all, what do you think 
of the 64bit Jaguar? Can it really 
knock the spots off CD32? 

What I can’t understand is why 
didn’t Commodore design the CD32 
for use with the A1200 & 4000? Mac¬ 
intosh have their CD as does the 
PC. A CD system was promised for 
Christmas ’93 - but nothing hap¬ 
pened. I feel left out. Still, I can’t help 
feeling that Commodore has some¬ 
thing up their sleeve. I want to see 
Commodore on top where they be¬ 
long - then again after their dreadful 
advertising campaign for CD32, it’s 
a wonder that they haven’t gone 
bankrupt. I don’t need to tell you 
aboutthe amount of talented AMIGA 
artists out there - someone ought to 
tell Commodore! 

It warms my heart to see that 
AUI uses Amigasto make this maga¬ 
zine, I noticed that everything is 
mentioned apart from the program 
used for page layout. What is the 
secret? I have an A4000 030 and I’d 
like to get into DTP, a lot seems to be 
unclear concerning that aspect of 
the AMIGA. For example, if Pro Page 
4.1 is capable of achieving profes¬ 
sional results, then why isn’t it be¬ 
ing used - especially by other AMIGA 
magazines? These mags sing the 
Pro Page praises: “It’s easy to use... 
“It’s powerful...”, “It handles colour 
separation..., etc., it turns out that 
they use Macs -1 don’t get it! Me, I’m 
holding out for Pagestream 3, any 
news on that? Can you PLEASE de¬ 
mystify the wonderful world of out¬ 
put bureaus, is there one in Lon¬ 
don? What is JCL’s ColourPic Plus 
& Cabaret? I am a total stranger to 
computers, I’d like to see more on 
this subject please. 

Lastly, why has the A1200 ben¬ 
efited from all these powerful accel¬ 
eration peripherals and can the 
A4000 be upgraded to 64bit? 

Simon Sudopi 
London 

Dear Simon, 

Remember this is Amiga User Interna¬ 
tional, not Atari Misuser. You tell me 
what A VP stands for and I’ll tell you if 
the Amiga can do it. 


To repeat myself, this is AUI notan 
Atari mag. I have no opinion of the 
Jaguar. All I will say is that bits don’t 
make machines. The Amiga is a col¬ 
lection of very powerful processors, 
note the plural, the 680x0 is only one of 
several processing elements within the 
Amiga and as such the number of bits 
is no indication of the power of the 
computer. 

Commodore have promised 
NOTHING so far. Commodore don’t 
give out this information because they 
know that in the world of computers, 
production needs can change at a 
moment’s notice. There have been 
several announcements that some 
devices will become available but I 
don ’tknow whatformatthey will take or 
when. You will just have to wait. (As will 
I, I want a CD32 for my 4000 tooI) 

If you want CD drives NOW, then 
they are available, they are normally 
SCSI and will read most CD Rom 
disks. More importantly, as you can 
see from last month’s Newsfile, there 
isnowa CD drive for the A1200. Atlast. 

Commodore’s advertising cam¬ 
paign was marvellous! At least you 
saw some adverts! Seriously many 
people complain about the advertis¬ 
ing, but if you believe the press re¬ 
leases Commodore can’t make CD32s 
or A1200s quickly enough. They have 
also been in business a VERY long 
time, which is more than can be said 
for some companies. I will be the first to 
admit that Commodore ha ve had prob¬ 
lems and they still do in some areas but 
they must be doing something right. 

The final output of AUI is largely 
done using Amigas and with MACs 
controlling the film element, much to 
the Editor’s annoyance I might add. It’s 
a commercial fact of life; the Mac is the 
most common tool for driving the big 
output devices that a magazine like 
AUI needs. The DTP programs that 
drive these big output machines are 
not available for the Amiga and the 
programs that are available have not 
developed to the same degree - yet - 
maybe one day. A little while ago we 
did produce a supplement in AUI that 
was completely done on the Amiga 
and that worked quite well, so there is 
hope. 

There are dozens of bureaux in 
London, just look in business pages or 
even in the small ads! 

What do you want to know about? 

As for the ColourPic and Cabaret, 
well I’m going to be a little hard on you 
here. Try looking at JCLs advert on 
page 56 of the Jan 94 issue of A Ul. The 
advert is very detailed and tells all. 

I don’t understand the last part of 
your letter. The A1200 has the accel¬ 
erator products because the users want 
them. Do you think that there should be 
none or what? 

As there are no high performance 
cheap 64 bit processors about at the 
moment, the answer is NO. TheA4000 


is a 32 bit internal architecture and 
would not get the benefit of a full power 
64 bit system. You will have to wait for 
the next generation of Amigas, or per¬ 
haps the generation after that. 



Dear AUI, 

I currently run an A600 with 2MB 
RAM and an external drive so this 
question could seem a little strange. 
Could you help me in my quest? I 
wish to resurrect an old 1983 C64, 
yes a C64, I just can’t let the poor 
thing die. 

If you ask it to do anything it 
sticks its thumb in its mouth and 
goes Drrr my brain hurts. It doesn’t 
appear to have any chip RAM spare 
to run a program yet the screen 
prompt is OK. 

I do have a set of new memory 
chips but none of the numbers 
match the ones in my machine. I 
have checked a friend’s C64 and 
none of his chip numbers match 
with my C64’s or with the new chip 
numbers. 

I’m not too bad with a soldering 
iron and to make things easier have 
a set of chip carriers for the board. 

Here is a list of chip numbers 
from my C64: 

/B8412 MM2114N-25L 
7711 1784 7708 1584 
MCM666 AQD8413 - EIGHT OF 

SN7 4LS08N RQ8417E 
7707 1484 
Two OF 

P8340 

CD4066BCN 

MM5666BN 

NB74LS258 

8412M46 

414X SN74LS373N , 

556PC 

8416 

Here is a list of the new memory 
chip set: 

KM4164B-12 851C -Three of 
KM4164B-12 016C 
KM4164B-12 901C -Two of 
KM4164B-12 847C 
KM4164B-12 016C 

Please help match the com 
sponding numbers and save an ol 
timer from the scrap heap, the C6 
that is. 

T.Dangerfie! 

Not 

Dear T.Dangerfield, 

It’s been a long time since I had the 
off a C64! But they are fairly simf. 
devices compared to the Amiga. I ji 
wish that you had been as precise w 


120 


AUI • JULY 1994 


















AUI Answers 


the fault symptoms as you have with 
the chip numbers. Most of the num¬ 
bers on chips are production codes, 
the memory chips that you list are 
MM2114N-25 all the other numbers 
are the production codes. 

However strange as it may seem, 
I think that you may have a problem 
somewhere. The memory chips that 
you have quoted MM2114 are far too 
small. That particular chip is only2048 
by one bit (from memory, its a very old 
chip) 8 of them would give you a total 
of 16 Kbytes. 

The chips that you have as a spare 
set, 4164 are each 64k by one bit and 
are the correct chips for the C64 
memory. The memory positions should 
be marked U9, U10, U11, U12, U21, 
U22, U23 and U24 on the PCB. 

If you can, I suggest that you get 
hold of a copy of the Commodore 64 
Programmers’ Reference Guide, ISBN 
0-672-22056-3, as that has a circuit 
diagram of the C64 in it and you will find 
that most helpful. 


OTHER 


Dear AUI, 

I have a few questions I would like 
you to answer. 

1.1 recently bought a printer off my 
brother-in-law and I am not sure 
which driver I should be using. At 
the moment I am using the EPSON 
Q driver. It seems to work OK, but it 
does have its problems with print¬ 
ing out graphic. The make of the 
printer is a SHINWA A-V 8052, but 
on the front of it there is another 
number WM100. 

2. If you cannot help me, could you 
tell me who to write to for help? 

3. Why haven’t you answered my 
previous letters. 

4.1 recently bought the A1200, which 
I think is an excellent machine com¬ 
pared to the A600 I’ve had over the 
last year. Is it possible to link the 
A1200 to the CD 32, because judg¬ 
ing by what the mags are saying 
Commodore have dropped the idea 
Df making a compatible CD to con¬ 
centrate on the new spec machines, 
f so do you think the PC lovers are 
joing to have the last laugh again. I 
lave a funny feeling that Commo- 
iore are hiding something from us, 
lecause I have heard they are going 
o drop the price of the CD32 late 
his year to £199. What is the point 
•f coming out with a CD drive that 
ost £100 more than the CD32? 

. I recently started a course in com- 
uter applications working with the 
Id PC and I must say they are a load 
f s**t compared to the A1200 oper- 
ting system and there is a lot of 
ther areas where the A1200 is bet- 
r. 


6. I am having some trouble with 
Coverdisk 28 seekspeed. After I have 
decrunched it on to a disk then run 
it, it appears for 2 seconds then it’s 
gone I have tried everything to get it 
to stay on screen but with no luck. 
Please help. 

7. How do you decrunch programs 
to disk? If I decrunch to RAM it 
works OK but I am getting fed up 
with taking it from there to the disk. 
Please could you explain the full 
procedure ie disk name empty draw 
name utilities. 

Antony Hinks 
Portsmouth 

Dear Antony, 

The Epson Q driver is for 24 pin Epson 
compatibles, Epson Xand Epson X old 
are for 9 pin Epson compatibles. Use 
whatever suits your printer. The other 
place to write to is the printer manufac¬ 
turers. However they are not likely to 
help with computer specific problems. 

What previous letters? I have 
searched a whole year’s worth of Amiga 
Answers and I’ve not have a letter from 
you before. You have not addressed 
your letter to any particular section of 
AUI, so it may never have been sent to 
me. PLEASE address your letters to 
the correct departments. If you are 
making several points to different sec¬ 
tions, DO NOT put them on the same 
sheet. Use two sheets of paper and 
address each one to the correct sec¬ 
tion. I’m sorry to say this but in a busy 
office a letter may get processed by 
someone who does not realise that 
there are other points to be answered 
by other sections. 

We are normally pretty careful with 
letters, but sometimes things can get 
lost. I have said this before, I answer 
ALL letters I receive without fail. 

It has been possible to connect CD 
ROM drives to the Amiga for years. 
They are just rather expensive. Some 
CD Rom drives use the SCSI inter¬ 
face. Since the A2000 there ha ve been 
SCSI interfaces for the Amiga. A sim¬ 
ple connection and a software driver 
and you can read CD ROMs. 

I would like to see an add on for the 
A2/3/4000 as the convenience factor 
would be worth a few extra quid. How¬ 
ever it has been possible to connect 
the CD32 to any Amiga almost since it 
hit the shops. You need a small inter¬ 
face unit and a software driver. You 
need the CD ROM with the driver on it! 

Give Brian Fowler computers a 
call about this... Where did I get this 
information from? Try page 71 of the 
March/April issue of AUI! 

I don’t understand why PC lovers 
will ever have the last laugh what’s it 
got to do with them? 

Remember that the PC is crippled 
by a very outdated operating system. 
Everything that the PC does has to be 
done in the 640K memory range, un¬ 
less special drivers are used. If you 


load a good OS onto the PC then 
things improve dramatically. MS-DOS 
is MS-Dross, I’m afraid. That’s the rea¬ 
son why Microsoft have spent so much 
money developing Windows NT, it is a 
complete replacement DOS that will 
use the full potential of the intel proces¬ 
sors. Only time will tell if NT catches 
on, it does require a lot of hardware 
resources to run at the moment. 

I am normally able to show any PC 
user up with the productivity achiev¬ 
able with the Amiga, but the PC is a 
business standard and that’s what most 
software houses develop for. 

I’m not surprised you are having 
problems with seekspeed on disk 28... 
It’s on disk 27! 

Also it is not crunched, What on 
earth are you doing? I click on the icon 
and I get the control window up. 

Decrunching to a disk... read the 
docs with Lha. 

HINT: type Lha? 



Dear AUI, 

In future I would like to get a Amiga 
4000T and I would like to know it if it 
going to work on an Amiga 4000T. 

1. What about a Monitor Philips 0.26, 
1280*1024, is it going to work on a 
Amiga 4000T? 

2. And what about HP-Jetstore 5000 
Model, but what is HP Jetstore 5000? 

3. For instance I would like a printer 
that does do excellent work and I 
scheap for parts ink or laser and so 
on. 

a. I would like very good colour. 

b. Graphics 

4. So but I would like to buy a disk 
drive with built in protection against 
virus (single or double decked) 

5. I’m a beginner on computers and 
I would like an Amiga and I’m happy 
to have an Amiga computer. 

6.1 would like to buy a Amiga, so I 
don’t have to buy the hardware that 
I don’t have to extend for years. Or 
what kind system would you rec¬ 
ommend buying for the money? 

M Bobanovic 
B.C. Canada 

Dear M. Bobanovic 

I’m going to have to do some guessing 

with your letter! 

The 4000T might take a while to get 
into the stores and even then I expect 
that you will have to go to a specialist 
dealer to get one. 

The monitor sounds good, but you 
have not given me enough informa¬ 
tion. You need a true multisync moni¬ 
tor to make full use of the Amiga dis¬ 
play modes. 

The Jetstore 5000 is a printer, con¬ 
tact your nearest HP dealer and they 
will be able to give you the sales lea f¬ 
lets and maybe some example print¬ 


outs. Be warned, I’ve not seen a spe¬ 
cific printer driver for the Jetstream. 

If you want color and graphics then 
the cheapest method is a color ink jet, 
say an HP or Canon device. 

Forget hardware virus protection, 
it is a bit too specific and will only stop 
a small number of virii. A good anti 
virus software package running all the 
time is a better bet. Anyway providing 
that you know where your disks come 
from and that they are not used for 
pirating software it is rare to come 
across a virus. In all the years that I 
have been using the Amiga I have only 
come across two. 

I can’t answer your last point at all. 
I have no idea what you want to do. 
The A4000 is a very nice machine, but 
if you only want to play games and 
dabble in computing then an A1200 is 
a cheaper path to follow. However, it is 
nowhere near as expandable. 


COVERDISK 


Dear AUI, 

I bought the AUI and the Amiga 
Format magazine with your cover 
disks which you say are muppet 
proof! Here I am to prove you wrong! 

I got an Amiga for Christmas so 
I am fairly new to all this and I just 
can’t seem to get into to disk. The 
paint program looks absolutely 
wonderful, it’s just so frustrating 
that I can’t get it to run, what I really 
need is some help! 

Can you recommend a disk that 
will inform about all the bits I should 
really already be informed about so 
that I can understand the maga¬ 
zines and the manual i.e. what to 
select in what order? 

I’m not very computer minded, 
but I would like to get into them. At 
the moment I have a massive cul¬ 
ture shock so please be gentle with 
me as I just need a few basics to get 
me heading in the right direction 
Ian Pammagl 
Suffolk 


Dear Ian, 

Firstly I hope I’ve read your name 
correctly, as you are a beginner I think 
it is time for a reminder of how to write 
to Amiga Answers. 

1. Give your name (and PRINT IT 
PLEASE), it is not nice writing back to 
someone who is anonymous. 

2. Print your address clearly. 

3. You may give your telephone 
number, I don’t normally answer que¬ 
ries by telephone but sometimes it can 
be useful if I can contact you directly. 

4. State which Amiga you have. 

5. Which version of the operating sys¬ 
tem, Workbench and Kickstart. 

6. Which peripherals you have fitted, 

► 


JULY 1994 • AUI 


121 



















AUI Answers 


extra drives, hard drives, modems, 
printer etc. 

7. IMPORTANT BIT THIS HERE! A 
clear description of the problem. 

8. Make sure I can read your letter. I 
prefer letter quality printed output, but 
plain dot matrix is fine. If you do send 
in handwritten letters make sure I can 
read them. I don’t care about the 
quality of the English or grammar, pro¬ 
viding I can read the letter and under¬ 
stand the problem, that’s all that mat¬ 
ters. 

It is a little difficult for me to say 
where to begin, as I don’t know which 
system you are using. Amiga Format 
is nothing to do with AUI, so I can’t 
help there. The Amiga is the most 
complex home computer generally 
available, FAR more complex than 
the IBM clones, but a good deal easier 
to use. 

It is unfortunate that you have 
come across decrunching problems 
so early in your Amiga ‘career’, but 
these things do happen and lessons 
can be learned from them. The Paint 
program, well it is VERY VERY good. 
I’m not an artist and I have remarked 
several times before that if you want 
one oblong(ish) box sitting on top of 
another oblong(ish) box, then I’m one 
of the world’s best at that. I’ll even fill 
the box with a nice solid colour. It 
makes me feel rather sick when I see 
someone create a real picture with 
one of these packages. 

We have published a step by step 
guide on the Coverdisk pages to sort 
out the decrunching of PPaint. There is 
also another letter in Amiga Answers 
on this matter, where I have repro¬ 
duced the guide. 

I don’t know of any disk-based 
training packages, but the Bruce Smith 
Book “Mastering Amiga Workbench” 
(ISBN 1-873308-08-6) is just what you 
need to get started. As with many 
things the real teacher is time and you 
will need a lot of time to master the 
Amiga. The basic operations are very 
easy, especially if you are using Work¬ 
bench 2 or greater. 

The most important things to find 
out are: 

Howto copy your Workbench disks. 
YOU MUST NEVER run the Amiga 
from your official Workbench disks. 
The only time you should use them is 
to make a backup of them and then you 
should use the backups. I go one step 
further, and make a backup of the 
backups and if I mess up the working 
disks I recreate them from the first 
backup set. With very important oper¬ 
ating system disks I think this is time 
well spent. 

How to copy disks in general. 

How to move files from one drawer 
to another, even if they are on different 
disks. 

Howto view all of the files, even the 
files that do not have icons. 

How to delete files. 


COVERDISK 



Dear AUI , 

I have owned an Amiga A500 com¬ 
puter for several years and am very 
pleased with it. On the odd occa¬ 
sion, I make a foray into the compu¬ 
ter magazine market, often tempted 
by the Cover Disk on offer. A few 
days ago, I purchased the February 
issue of your magazine, being es¬ 
pecially interested in some of the 
programs offered by the Coverdisk 
(No.32). I was particularly taken by 
the fact that a caption concerning 
the installation of the disk stated 
“The installer is totally muppet 
proof”. 

So, blissfully happy, I returned 
home, booted up and tried, having 
read the instructions, to install the 
programs. Many frustrating hours 
later, I have to conclude that I am 
not a muppet, as I have failed to 
install any of the programs, although 
the disc seems to run properly. 

My computer uses Workbench 
1.3.2, memory expanded to 1 MB and 
I have an external disc drive, but no 
hard disk. 

I have tried to install the pro¬ 
grams by: 

1. Booting up using Workbench, 
installing the programs on a format¬ 
ted disc and copying the libraries to 
Workbench. Unsuccessful as the 
Workbench disk does not have room 
for the libraries and programs did 
not install on the formatted disc. 

2. Booting up using Workbench, 
installing programs and libraries to 
Workbench. Unsuccessful. No 
room. 

3. Booting up using the Superdisk. 
Installing programs on formatted 
disc, libraries to Workbench. No 
room on Workbench. Programs 
failed to install. 

4. Having booted up, installing pro¬ 
grams and libraries on RAM. Suc¬ 
cessful, but when I tried to run the 
programs, I was informed that there 
was insufficient memory. 

5. Having installed the programs on 
the RAM, I have tried copying them 
onto disk. This seemed to be suc¬ 
cessful, but when I tried to run one 
I was informed that there was an 
error whilst opening (205 Or 212). 

Not being totally computer liter¬ 
ate, I now am seeking your help in 
an attempt to find out what I am 
doing wrong. Any suggestions 
would be most welcome. 

A.M. Galbraith 
Kent 


Dear A.M. Galbraith 
You have the same problem as every¬ 
one else with uncrunching the 
Coverdisks. The problem should go 
away with Superdisk 35 onwards as 


that was the first disk of which we could 
change the content. The problem is 
the Lha uncruncher is an old version 
that requires the ARP library. 

You are so close to getting things 
working that I’m amazed you did not 
take the last little step. 

Booting up with the Coverdisk is 
the best method for you. Have a for¬ 
matted disk or two ready and put that 
in your second drive. Run the installer 
and change the install directory to 
your second drive when asked. You 
should not have to worry about the 
libraries when booting from the 
Coverdisk. 

The errors you mention are caused 
by not having a program to run! 

The other errors, well, they are a 
bit obvious I think. Workbench full, 
means that.... wait for it... that there is 
no room on your Workbench disk! Get 
rid of something, but PLEASE only use 
a copy of your Workbench. 


COVERDISK 



Dear AUI , 

I recently boughtthis month’s issue 
of AUI because I thought that the 
Coverdisks (Superdisks) looked 
great especially the one with 
Soundeffect on it. However, it does 
not work as far as I can see. That is, 
in the installing process, explained 
on page 10 you say now select hard 
or floppy disk: I selected floppy disk 
for I don’t have the hard disk. Your 
next paragraph was you should now 
see a scrollable list. But I see a 
message saying you will need two 
or three blank disks but the maga¬ 
zine says nothing about this. So 
when do I need these two or three 
blank disks? 

Daniel McGlynn 
London. 


Dear Daniel, 

PLEASE when writing to Amiga An¬ 
swers state your problem clearly, and 
tell me which system you are using. 

I expect that you are suffering from 
the same problem that quite a few 
others are having. The version of Lha 
on the Coverdisk is quite old and needs 
the ARP.library in YOUR Libs: direc¬ 
tory. (By the time you read this reply, 
the Lha on the Coverdisk will have 
been replaced.) 

The installer utility gives you addi¬ 
tional information, to that which is 
printed in the magazine. For safety the 
installerdecrunches the files into RAM: 
unless you tell it otherwise. 

As for the two or three disks, well, 
I would have thought that the use of 
these was obvious. Once you 
decrunch the programs, where are 
you going to put them? Maybe the 
blank disks have something to do with 
this? 


COVERDISK 



Dear AUI , 

Could you be so kind as to explai 
to me how on earth the TOTAL NO\ 
ICE is supposed to use Superdis 
32.1 Have spent hours trying to g< 
something out of it. I cannot seei 
to get it to do anything. Please coul 
you explain in great detail how 1 
get addresser on to a blank forma 
ted disk. The instructions in the ma 
are assuming know somethin 
about computers, to a tot. 
D**KHEAD like me it means nothin' 

I have unarchived some oth( 
cover discs without too many prol 
lems. This one has me beat. Wher 
go through the process listed 
prompts with everything is OK ar 
completed but it’s nowhere to fc 
found. I like the sound of address' 
and would like to use store all name 
and addresses and hopefully prii 
this information out. If not cou 
you possibly let me know suitab 
program which I could store name 
and addresses be able to print o 
individual labels with one name ar 
address only. Any help or inform 
tion on above items would be mo 
appreciated. 

Would you know of anyone wf 
would have the pin switch settinc 
or any info on an Amstrad LQ35( 
printer? I Have tried Amstrad to r 
avail. 

Mark Haw< 
Hereto 


Dear Mark, 

You have the same problem with t 
Coverdisk as the other readers w 
are getting into a fix. I assume that 
reading Amiga Answers that you ha 
already sorted out your problem, t 
just in case: 

The problem is caused by an < 
version of Lha, the crunch < 
uncruncher program. It needs t 
ARP. library to be in your libs: directo 
Libs: is on your WORKBENCH disk, 
the disk that you boot from. 

There are two methods of sorti 
out this problem. The easiest is 
BOOT from the Coverdisk; that w 
the correct libraries will automaticc 
be picked up. The second way is 
copy the ARP.library onto your Wo 
bench. The installer will do this if > 
ask it to. (The copy library request 
select the ARP library and ensure t 
you change Ram: to libs: installer 
do the rest. The only problem that c 
sometimes happen is that you mi 
have a full Workbench disk. You 
need to clear out something from y 
Workbench in order to fit the library 
You have not told me what system j 


122 


AUI • JULY 1994 
















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AUI Answers 


◄- 

are using, so I can only make some 
suggestions at this point 

You should have things like 
MEmacs, keyshow, graphicdump etc. 
somewhere on your disk. You could 
select one or two of these to delete to 
make some room. However, ONLY 
WORK ON A COPY OF YOUR WORK¬ 
BENCH! 

I’ve no idea about Amstrad equip¬ 
ment. Amstrad should be able to help, 
but if they are unwilling then maybe a 
letter to an Amstrad mag, or user group 
would be a better bet. 


COVERDISK 



Dear AUI, 

Re: Superdisk No 32 


I’m stuck! Booted my Amiga 600, 
W.B,2, with 2 RAM, 2 drives (floppy). 
Operative (me), a retired, recently enli¬ 
sted idiot. (As in fortune no, #128), to 
computer use, for a variety of inter¬ 
ests i.e. Video titling / Digitising etc. 

Following the unarchiving pro¬ 
cedures as described. Destination 
via: Show drives, DF1, Selecting 
Addresser. Ok! to here. Requester 
asked did I wish to unarchive more? 
I selected negative! Requester: “Do 
you wish to install any libraries?” 
Now this is where you lost me. I tried 
to copy libraries to the diskon which 
I had copied “Addresser”. I Tried to 
copy them onto Workbench, which 
was filled by ARP.library only. Basi¬ 
cally I did not know which, if any 
libraries were needed to run which 
programme? RE: fortune no,#128! 

However, Booting with Work¬ 
bench, now full. But only containing 
ARP.library, with DF1: Containing 
Addresser copy. Icons were obtained. 
Icon Addresser when selected, open¬ 
ed the programme. BUT. When sel¬ 
ecting the other icons. I was told. 
“Unable to open your tool; C/More”. 

I have dug around in informa¬ 
tion etc. But there is nothing that I 
can understand, to activate these 
Icons! i.e. Adverts etc. 

Working on the Quote “Even 
idiot’s need love”. Please be gentle 
with me, and explain, simply, what 
went wrong? 

John W Hateley 
Bedfordshire 


Dear John, 

Well done! 

You ha ve managed to solve a prob¬ 
lem: i.e. the ARP.library that you will 
have noticed that lots of readers have 
been foxed by. 

You are almost there, a little more 
experience on the Amiga and your 
other problem would have melted away. 

The error message tells you what is 
wrong, but you don’t know the Amiga 
terminology to decipher it. A tool in 
Amiga-speak is another name for a 
program. More specifically it is normally 


the name of a program the is required 
by another file in order to run. If you 
have a text file you want to display it. 
You might use a text editor and then 
load the text into the editor to read it. 
However, you can do all of this in one 
operation by using the icon tooltypes 

Copy one of the icons into the 
Ram: disk (just to be safe) and then 
click ONCE on it. From the main Work¬ 
bench menu select icons/information. 
A window will open and you will see 
some information about the icon. One 
item will be the tooltypes. This will say 
c:more or something like that. This 
tells the Amiga that the program re¬ 
quired to run this icon is c:more 

More is a text reader and you prob¬ 
ably ha ve it in your tools dra wer. The c: 
is saying that the more program is 
located in the c: drawer. (This does not 
have a drawer icon, but if you select 
show all files from the workbench menu 
you will find it.) 

What you need to do is tell the icon 
where YOUR more program is. You 
might have it on the Workbench disk, 
in the tools drawer. If so you need to 
change the tooltype to read 
Workbench:tools/more. Remember to 
save the icon information. When you 
double click on the icon it should be 
able to find the more program and run. 


COVERDISK 



Dear AUI, 


HELP. HELP. HELP!!!!!!! I am having 
some real bad dreams about UN¬ 
CRUNCH, to the point of total 
despair. I have had a 600HD for two 
years and have bought various mags 
over this period. Usually the kids 
insist on the ones with free games 
which have proved worthwhile. 

I first bought AUI last month as I 
liked the format of games, hardware 
and utility articles plus two “free” 
disks. PPAINT proved no problem 
and as the kids were demanding 
“PACMAN” I followed the “UN¬ 
CRUNCH” instructions. Everything 
seemed to be happy and I was in¬ 
structed where I could find the game. 
It wasn’t there, in fact it wasn’t any¬ 
where!!!! 

Ok we won’t use the RAM disk, 
we’ll use a floppy - same, nothing. 
Try the libraries yes all dearchived 
and in correct place - try other files - 
no hope. Must be a bad disk kids - 
send it back with description of prob¬ 
lem - a few days later new disk and 
“very sorry to learn that you have 
had problems.” Try again you must 
be joking no uncrunched files any¬ 
where. 

March AUI now on the book¬ 
stands and on page 94 a fix for my 
very problem. It’s the ARP library 
kids. First we have to go to COMET 
to obtain another free disk, six as¬ 
sistants before someone admits to 
any knowledge of AUI, but we do get 


SUPERDISK 34 without the sales 
pitch of CD32. 

Let’s dearchive 34 first no files 
anywhere AGAIN put ARP lib in our 
SYSTEM lib drawer no fix!!! Back to 
disk 32 as bad as ever Sorry kids I 
tried!!!!! 

NOW LOOK HERE For fear of 
looking a complete fool in front of 
my kids will you please explain in 
simple one line qualified instruct¬ 
ions howto getthese progs on disks 
32 and 34 into useable form. 

Also if I am expected to visit 
Comet once a month to obtain my 
“FREE” disk then I could very 
quickly go off AUI. 

I also have no access to “Pretend 
to Install” the “button” is cross- 
hatch and clicking on has no effect. 

M.A.Smith 

Basingstoke 


Dear M.A.Smith, 

You have correctly identified the 
problem, the only reason that it would 
not ha ve worked is that the A RP. library 
has not been copied into the libs: 
directory. Check this out with a directory 
utility or use the shell. Open up a shell, 
type cd libs: <ret> and then dir <ret> 
and you should see the files in the libs 
directory. ARP should be one of them. 

That is the problem so other than 
that I can’t think of any reason why 
things don’t work. 

The program files are simple .lha 
archives. If you have your own copy of 
Lha and are happy using it, then the 
program files are located in the 
superdisk/programs directory and can 
be decrunched like any normal. lha file. 

The reason that the pretend to 
install is cross hatched out is that it is 
not required. The installer is set to 
decrunch to ram: by default and gives 
plenty of messages as to what it is 
going to do and as such it does not 
need the pretend option. 



Dear AUI, 


I’m a student of the University of 
telecommunications “La Salle” in 
Barcelona Spain. 

My questions is the following: I 
bought the A1200 because, here, 
the computing Amiga press wrote 
something about an incredible chip 
the DSP, able to convert the A1200 
to 16bits, also modem, fax and no 
end of promises. 

Now a year later, even I don’t 
know something about this one. 

Please give me information about 
the DSP, because the 8 bits are very 
little for my music compositions. 

Now I’m working on a project for 
to do Radio Packet, with the Amiga, 
and if you know someone interested 
in this affair, please send me a re¬ 
port of this one, and even if you 
know some PD program to run this 


application like Baycom (for PC) 
would be very pleased with you. 

My last question is the possibilit 
of connection the A1200 to an H 
IDE of PC send me instructions c 
compatibility and the diagram c 
connections please. 

I’m sorry but my English isn 
good, this is my first year. I believ 
that in England the Amiga is bettc 
than here who the kings are the PCj 
J.R.U rban 
Spai 


Dear J.R.Urbano, 

Your English is infinitely better than rr 
Spanish, which is nonexistent! I dor 
care about the grammar, or even if th 
words are used in the wrong contex 
providing I can understand the problen 
I’m happy. 

DSP, this is vaporware, or if yc 
prefer a load of hype that some peopi 
started writing about without checkin 
their facts. 

Commodore NEVER stated that 
DSP would be used at all. It is always 
POSSIBILITY, but Commodore don’t rt 
lease details about possibilities, they on 
release information about what is actual 
available. This annoys some people, bi 
there are so many variables of cost, dt 
sign and production needs that I thin 
Commodore have taken the correct ai 
proach to their announ-cements. 

There are 12 and 16 bit soun 
systems available for the Amigt 
Wavetools, Toccata and Sunriz 
products all provide 16bit capabilit) 
but at a price, both in terms of cost an 
the fact that they need a zorr 
expansion slot, so you need a A2001 
3000 or 4000 to use them. 

Packet Radio, well that’s easy e 
you need is a TNC and some softwan 
Have a look on the internet at ucsd.eo 
in the Amateur Radio directory you w 
find a version of NOS there for you i 
play with. 

The A1200 has the IDE H 
interface already fitted. You need a 2. 
inch IDE drive and the sho 
interconnection cable. Doing th 
yourself will void the guarantee also t 
aware that a lot of PC IDE drives ai 
rather limited in that they do not impk 
ment the full range of the IDE spe 
These drives can give problems, it 
best to check with your dealer first. 

If you want to link the Amiga ar 
the PC together, a shareware produ 
that will do this is called Twin Exp res 
That links the tow machines via tt 
serial port, and allows file exchange 


When writing to Amiga Answers 
include as much information as 
possible about your system and 
about which software/hardware you 
are running. This will help to 
determine what your problem might 
be and its solution! 

Send your questions to: 

Amiga Answers 
Amiga User International 
48 George Street 
London W1H5RF 


124 


AUI • JULY 1994 




















In fact, AUI tried it years ago 
on a floppy using Hyperbook, but 
it took up so much space that we 
discontinued it. Now, the lucky 
CD 32 owners can enjoy 
something that is close to a TV 
programme on their disc. 

But, I’m pleased to say, the 
instant I make a statement, 
technology proves me wrong - 
and in this case you are proved 
right. There was enough room on 
the disc this time to include 
material for CDTV and A570 - or 
no doubt some bright CD-ROM 
owners like yourself. And some of 
the technical problems have been 
overcome to allow both CDTV 


This is where you get vour chance to sneak — or 
write — vour mind about what’s bugging vou. Bud 
Vennos fields the bouquets and the brickbats- 


Dear AUI, 

So, Multimedia finally hits the 
Amiga! Or so we are led to 
believe. I for one do not think 
so. Take for example your CD 
cover disk, Multimedia? No, to 
be truly multimedia would 
require it to be accessible on 
Amiga computers, not just CD- 
32. And speaking of CD-32, 
since when has that machine 
ever been supported by more 
than the games industry? Sure, 
the add ons have been 
announced to provide FMV 
(now you can watch movies!), 
but where is the serious 
applications software which the 
multimedia hype cries out for? 

A cynical view, perhaps, but 
since you replied to those 
“unfortunates” who own a 
CDTV and therefore cannot 
access your “World-First” CD, 
that more CD-32 units have 
been sold than CDTV ever did is 
missing the point. Multimedia 
should be available to the 
masses. What about those who 
own the Amiga 1500/2000/3000 
& 4000 with a CD-ROM drive 
fitted, are they too to be denied 
access to your CD? (Wise-up 
chaps, there are more “big-box” 
Amigas out there than CD32!). 

I am running an ageing 1500 
with, you guessed it, a Toshiba 
CD-ROM. OK there are no 
serious titles out there yet, but 
running Vista-Pro from the 
Hard-Disk and being able to 
access the DEM files from the 
PC version on CD is what you 
could loosely class as Multi- 
Media (i.e. accessible across 
differing platforms). The point 
is, if I can do this with a PC CD, 
why can’t I do it with an Amiga 
CD? It’s the same family of 
computer! And before anyone 
even thinks about explaining 
the difference in chip sets, I 
hasten to add I work within the 
industry and do know the 
difference between my Agnus & 
my elbow! 


If you take the PC & Mac 
owners, they have much more 
available to them in the way of 
CD titles, cover disks are now 
catering for both markets with 
the ISO 9660 format, and 
include PC & Mac programs on 
the same disk! Let’s face it, 
with 660MB to play with, 
there’s certainly enough room 
to swing a cat! Are we going to 
be guilty for the destruction of 
the Amiga perhaps? The old 
argument that Piracy Is Killing 
Software, was and is now a 
reality. But for a machine to be 
crippled because CD software 
is only available for one 
machine is total madness! 

CD32 doesn’t even have a 
keyboard yet. I know that 
progress has to be made, but it 
has taken so long for the 
Amiga to shake off the “Games 
Machine” image, and here we 
are with a virtual console which 
is fed on CD fodder of the 
games variety, being heralded 
as the way forward in Multi- 
Media! 

For your information, not all 
CD32 software (and I mean 
games, there exists nothing 
else) is purely CD32. Not all of 
it needs the high tech, all 
singing, all dancing Planar 
chip! Labyrinth works quite 
well on a pre AGA machine 
with 1 Meg chip ram & 68000 as 
the minimum! 

Having spoken to a couple 
of software houses regarding 
future developments due to the 
advent of CD-Software, I can 
only hope that they keep to the 
promises. Just think, DTP (or 
any serious application) 
software on one CD, everything 


you need clip-art, fonts, 
templates... It’s all possible. 

These are trying times, we 
have (at last) gone away from 
the old “My computer’s better 
than yours” argument, and I do 
not wish to own a CD32, I’m 
happy with my present 
machine, but it would be a nice 
gesture if (for the sake of the 
CDTV owners) you could 
somehow squeeze the second 
cover disk onto the CD. Lets 
face it chaps, there’s 400MB 
spare, surely it will fit. 

K.P. Kitching 
Wakefield 

W. Yorkshire 

Dear K.P.Kitching, 

Now who was it is in ‘Alice in 
Wonderland” who said that a 
word meant whatever they 
wanted it to mean? Not 
K. P. Kitching shurely... (Don’t call 
me Shirley..) No, that wasn’t the 
name, but you seem to believe 
that you cam put any meaning 
onto the word “multimedia”. The 
word doesn’t mean “accessible to 
all Amigas” as apparently you 
think it does. What it does imply is 
all sorts of nice media mixed in 
together - you know like one of 
those exciting parties that 
Conservative members of 
parliament seem to be caught at 
and have to resign over. That’s 
multimedia? No, of course it isn’t. 
That’s an orgy, but then 
compared to what once was 
available on 8 bit machines not so 
long ago that’s what we’re getting 
now. Moving pictures - video and 
film -, sound, graphics, text, 
music. You name it and it’s 
multiplied media ... and it’s on our 
CD. 


and CD 32 stuff to live happily 
together. But, as the Editor 
commented in the last issue, 
there are still some technical 
hurdles to be leapt though. So I 
wasn’t entirely wrong. Which is a 
bit of a bolster for my damaged 
ego. (Never having been wrong 
before in my life, of course... Or 
so I’m told I give the impression!) 

And, almost in answer to your 
very own comment, there’s 
Labyrinth on the very disc of this 
issue and playable both for CDTV 
and CD 32s. Well, what about that? 

Yes, programs like Labyrinth 
show what can be done by top 
programming talent and we will, I 
am certain, see the CD - the 
multimedia CD - bring you all the 
DTP and other applications you 
can handle. All in good time... 

You can’t hurry technology, as we 
well know after trying to put out a 
CD in a month, but also you can’t 
stop it. 

Dear AUI, 

I was impressed with your 
magazine which was bundled 
with my CD32 Console back in 
November. I subscribed as the 
offer was too good to refuse. I 
was well happy when my first 
issue came crashing on the 
mat but I’ve got a few gripes. 
You seem to be reviewing too 
many straight conversions. 
Obviously, I know there’s a lot 
on CD32, but with you being 
the only CD32 magazine surely 
you should be telling the 
owners about games of the 
future as you should get the 
information first from the 
software houses. 

- ► 


JULY 1994 • AUI 


125 


























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SCANNERS I SOFTWARE 



EErO.E.* All sales subject to our terms and conditions of business, prices can vary either up or down. Please confirm current price when ordering 



















































































































































































to reply 


—► I am also very distressed 
that you have decided to use 
your magazine inside AUI. Is 
this because you are shy about 
how many pages you’ve got on 
them? I believe that if you were 
to break away from AUI people 
would still buy it. And why? 
Because of the great CD Disk 
on the front. It sells itself. If you 
don’t I hope I’m not right, but 
the rumours could be true. CD! 
Magazine could be doomed. 

I would like to know if there 
are any plans for a boxing 
game on CD32 because on all 
Amiga formats these games 
are naff and could be a great 
asset on CD. Can I have a 
chance to review some of the 
games in your magazine? 

Please print this as I’m a fan 
and a subscriber, grovel, 
grovel. 

GOOD LUCK TO ALL 
AMIGA CD! TEAM. 

J. McKay 
Middlesbrough 
Cleveland 

Dear J. McKay (Why does 
nobody give their first names any 
more - have I been getting too 
familiar with you?) 

The idea of launching the “World 
First” interactive magazine was, 
as has been said, to give more 
people than just those already in 
possession of a CD 32 the 
opportunity to see the wonder of 
the compact disc based Amiga in 
all its multimedia splendour. 

The response we have had 
seems to both confirm that the 
idea has been very successfully 
received and also that there is 
room for an independent CD 
magazine too. 

When your letter was written 
no-one except us had brought out 
a CD-based Amiga magazine. 
Since then two have appeared 
and frankly from the 
correspondence we have had it 
seems that most Amiga CD! 
readers think they’re rubbish - an 
opinion with which I am in 
substantial agreement. (Surprise!) 

Why are they rubbish? Well, 
as the Editor says, somebody 
called them “Just a big floppy” 
which seems a pretty handsome 

AUI •JULY 1994 


waste of the CD 32’s abilities. 

Conversions? What we 
receive is what we can review. 
We’d like to have loads or 
marvellous new multimedia blow 
your socks off games but though 
we scour the horizons and the 
garbage cans of the games 
companies, none can we find. 

Are they hiding them? I think not. 
It just takes lots of time expertise 
and cash to produce really new 
chunks of multimedia 
entertainment, especially boxing 
games! (Of which, as yet, we 
have heard nothing.) But if we 
hear of one - or you do -1 will ask 
the Editor if you can review it! 

Dear AUI , 

I was initially very pleased to 
see the inclusion of a CD on 
the cover of AUI , but after 
further investigation there was 
little on the disk for non 
gamey users. Could you not 
include on the CD something 
for users of CD ROMs other 
that CD32 users? Could you 
not, say, include the second 
disk arced down on perhaps a 
DMS file of it, or include some 
med samples or fonts on it. 
Looking at PC CDs, it seems 
the Amiga market falls behind 
again and just gets a disk full 
of games. 

Apart from that I enjoy the 
mag though would like to see 
you cover Comms a little more 
in the pages. 

Paul Compton 
Fareham 
Hants. 

Dear Paul, 

Say not the struggle - or the letters - 
naught availeth.. On the CD this 
time you will find the previous 
SuperDisks some readers may not 
have been able to get and also 
some other “techie” stuff. And this is 
just the beginning.. We hope in 
future always to have a Techie 
comeh’, though we may have to 
hide it from the out-and-out games 
warriors! And comms is on the way. 

Dear AUI , 

In reply to James Carter’s letter 
(May Issue), in which he 
suspected Comet staff 


tampering with his CD, because 
of the faulty Microcosm demo. 
My demo also did the same, 
much to my annoyance, but the 
solution is simple; merely 
switch on the CD32, not just 
resetting it and make sure that 
there is NOT a CD in the 
machine; wait for the 
presentation screen and wait 
for a few seconds, and then 
place the demo disc in the 
machine and then head straight 
for the Microcosm demo which 
should now work perfectly. 

This also applies to any of the 
free full games on the 
CD.Finally when the hell is 
Jurassic Park coming out on 
CD32, it was advertised well 
before Christmas and still no 
sign of it. 

Keep up the good work 
involving the cover CDs. 

Ian Trushell 
Grimsby 
South Humberside 

Dear Ian, 

Thanks for the tip. It appears the 
reason why those sort of 
problems arise is that some 
games are hungry for chip RAM 
and what, in effect, you are doing 
when you carry out what you 
suggest, is flushing the memory 
successfully. Good on you for 
doing it too! 

And as for successful memory 
flushing, Ocean, the only 
begetters - apart from Spielberg - 
of Jurasssic Park could do with a 
reminder, you’re quite right. But 
for them, the problem may not be 
entirely technical - or not in the 
technology sense. Allegedly - 
Ashley Cotter-Cairns’ favourite 
word these days - the problem is 
more a legal - or financial - one 
than to do with RAM stuff. 
Allegedly (!) when they signed the 
deal with Spielberg’s people, 
Ocean did not include the CD 32 
format which was just a twinkle in 
CBM’s eye at that time. So when 
it came to it, the CD 32 format, 
allegedly, was not covered by the 
contract. We don’t know yet 
whether the problem has been 
sorted out. We are asking, but as 
yet have had no reply. Watch this 
- or rather some other in this 
magazine - space for news. 

Dear AUI , 

Your answer to Wayne 
Mumper’s letter in the March/ 
April, 1994 issue regarding 
“Printers” couldn’t have been 
be answered more 
appropriately. 

I have upgraded my 
computer and other Amiga 
products and software many 
times, always after reading 
magazine reviews. I recently 


upgraded my printer to a Canon 
BJC 600 only after reading 
magazine reviews. By using this 
method before a large money 
outlay I find that there is less 
chance of being disappointed 
with my purchase. 

I buy AUI as soon as it hits 
the bookstores because of the 
reviews and the useful utilities 
that you package with the 
magazine. Magazines that 
attach game demos leave me 
cold. I am not saying that they 
should not be produced, just 
that they are not for me. I 
would rather read a review and 
decide if the product addresses 
my needs. 

As long as you continue to 
publish AUI in its present 
format I will continue to 
purchase it, address criticisms 
of readers as the above 
mentioned and I will move on. 

Wayne Stevenson 
St. Catharines 
Canada 

Dear Wayne, 

The Canadian loyalty of 
Commodore - which after all 
started there some 35 years ago, 
has always been strong - and 
from my experience pretty 
sensible too. You’re right. The 
way to buy things is both to read 
as many comments from those 
reviewers or publications you 
respect as you can. And also, if 
it’s possible, go and try it out or 
find someone who has what 
you’re thinking of buying and get 
them to tell you what they think of 
it and even have a go at it under 
normal conditions. 

There is in the UK, ICPUG 
which can do a great job in giving 
advice to Amiga users and, if my 
memory serves me right, there 
used to be an excellent users 
group in Canada, in Toronto, 
called TPUG - is it now TBAG? - 
that provided a great deal of help 
to Commodore users. 

Wherever you go in the world 
there is generally a Commodore 
or Amiga specific user group and 
they are very useful in helping 
out. 

It’s nice to know that you find 
AUI so interesting - and it’s a 
great pleasure for us to hear from 
people, and we know there are 
plenty of them, who look forward 
each month to that very individual 
animal which is not like any other 
Amiga magazine, Amiga User 
International. Long may we, and 
your Cannuck bookstores, give 
you what you want. 

Dear AUI , 

I think the idea of putting a CD 
on the front of your mag is a 
great idea, but possibly the 


128 




choice of stores is not quite so 
hot. 

I live in Kensington in 
London (it goes with the job), 
great if you want to buy 
designer clobber at designer 
prices, but not so great if you 
need a Comet store or a 
Rumbelow shop. Anyway I 
travel to Doncaster every 
couple of weeks or so, on my 
last two trips I called into 
Comet only to be told “Sorry, 
we don’t have any AUI disks 
left, but we are expecting some 
in”! Now after two trips and one 
phone call later I have given up 
all hope of getting Coverdisk 
34. 

In the meantime I spy the 
May ish’ of AUI lurking behind 
Girlie Monthly. This time the 
paper trail was to take me to 
Rumbelows, well can you 
imagine the way I felt (I’m sure 
there’s a song there 
somewhere), when I tracked 
down the store only to find it 
closed and I don’t mean for 
lunch. I mean lock stock and 
barrel, gone, moved, packed up 
their spotted hankies and 
sloped off into the sunset. Now 
I am two disks down. 

Please, please can you pick 
a store for your next CD that 
even Kensington has, i.e. 
Dixons, Tandy or even ...NEXT, 
there is always one of those in 
every High St. 

Looking forward to the next 
installment just to see where 
trail leads. Keep up the good 
work and if... you could see 
your way clear to sending me 
the missing disks I would be 
eternally grateful. 

Alan Martin 

Kensington 

Dear Alan, 

It’s not an easy world it it? Even 
for those who roost in fashionable 
parts of London! We hope that 
Comet have learned their lesson. 
They didn’t actually ask us for any 
more disks or we would have 
made sure that they received 
some and been able to give you 
what you wanted. But anything 
new in this country seems to 
cause concern and confusion. Is 
there something odd about the 
UK? In most other parts of the 
world, they don’t suffer from “The 
Shock of the New” as it has been 
described. They get themselves 
involved in it. Do you think it is too 
much to ask to get chain stores 
involved too? It should be 
possible after all it isn’t exactly 
putting a man on the moon, is it? 

But because we felt you’ve 
got a point and we don’t want to 
see you do without, by the time 


this letter is read you should have 
received the missing disks. Enjoy 
them in sexy, trendy Kensington - 
and try asking in NEXT for the 
next disk... 

Dear AUI, 

Like Mr. P. Budd, I too was 
disappointed to find that your 
first cover CD would not boot 
up on my A570. Trying this only 
resulted in the CD-ROM drive 
thinking the CD was an audio 
disc, presenting the audio 
player screen and allowing me 
to listen to the four music 
tracks on the disc. 

After loading Workbench on 
my A500 Plus (2 Mb chip RAM), 
it was possible to access the 
files on the CD and run the free 
PD games by double-clicking 
their icons. Also, some of the 
images were viewable using 
Viewtek (from the AUI 
coverdisk of April 1993) but the 
majority refused to show, 
presumably because they are 
AGA pictures. 

In an effort to get the CD up 
and running, I opened a Shell 
and entered “Player 
Amiga_CD_1.int” (this being 
the last line in the startup- 
sequence), having first 
changed directory to CDO:. I 
was pleasantly surprised to see 
the Amiga CD! logo fly onto the 
screen followed by the 
introductory voice-over and the 
main menu. 

From here it was possible to 
access most of the items on 
the CD, with the exception of 
the AGA pictures, and the 
demo games, which caused the 
machine to crash and reset. 
Even the 1/4 frame video 
editorial of Ashley Cotter- 
Cairns loaded and ran but, 
while Ashley carried on 
speaking to the end, his lips 
stopped moving about half way 
through when the video froze. 

Having determined it wasn’t 
impossible to get some use out 
of the AUI CD, I was looking 
forward to seeing at least part 
of the May issue CD, especially 
the video sequences. Alas, 
improving the “multimedia 
marvel” may have CD32 
owners jumping for joy, but 
regrettably for A570 owners 
(yes, I know it isn’t meant for 
us anyway) it means less 
compatibility. Loading the main 
menu is again possible by 
typing “Player Am_CD2.int” at 
the Shell, but that is about as 
far as it goes this time. Trying 
to access the menu options 
just results in no response or a 
crash. 

Ah well, I guess we who 


bought A570s instead of CD32s 
(because we couldn’t afford 
them) will just have to make do 
with PD and Demos. I just hope 
we don’t have to put up with 
hard-sell sales people each 
month just to get our Utilities 
disc. 

Barry Cutler 

Beckenham 

Kent 

P.S. Any chance of 
Superdisk 34 -1 never got 
around to going to Comet. 

Dear Barry, 

I always thought that our readers 
were smart. Yes, Uncle Andy 
Eskelson would applaud your 
ingenuity and I’m dazzled by it. 

But do not despair, life is getting 
easier for you - if a mite less 
challenging. It’s clear you like 
solving problems but on the CD, 
as I mentioned earlier, this time 
you will have a special section for 
non-Amiga CD 32 users. And 
that, I’m glad to say means you. 

And by now you should have 
received the disk you so richly 
deserve. 

Dear AUI, 

Q. When is an Amiga CD not an 
Amiga CD? 

A. When it’s an Amiga CD! 

I was pleased to see AUI 
issue a CD as I have an A570 
and a CDTV, either of which 
can be connected by Parnet to 
my A1200. Quote a few CDTV 
titles work on the A1200 so I 
was disappointed to find that 
yours was not compatible. All it 
would do is play some music 
on the CDTV, or using Parnet, 
the graphic and sound files 
could be accessed. Why was it 
not Workbench compatible? 

The Almathera CDTV PD titles 
have three versions of 
Workbench on them to ensure 
compatibility. 

If you had advertised it as a 
CD32 CD then perhaps I could 
have understood, but you 
didn’t! I do not need to go to 
Comic warehouses to see what 
a CD will do so I will not get my 
Superdisk 34 (anyway I would 
prefer to keep the CD in case it 
becomes a collector’s item! 

Why could the Utilities not 
have been included on the CD? 
There’s plenty of room as many 
of the picture IFFs are repeated 
in several directories, or an 
audio track could have been 
left off. 

I trust you will reconsider 
your policy on your CDs as I 
have no intention of getting a 
CD32. My A1200, or even A500 
is far more useful (try running 
ProPage or ADPRO on the 


CD32, I’m sure problems would 
be encountered like lack of 
memory, hard drive etc. etc.). 

John Kendrick 
Ilford 
Essex 

Dear John, (Did you once live in 
Frome in Somerset -1 knew a 
Kendrick from there?) 

As you will read above, we took 
your and the other non-CD32 
users cries of frustration to heart 
and Shazam! Out from the AUI 
telephone box the SuperDisc 
emerged complete with its A570 
and CDTV underpants outside its 
CD 32 long johns! I hope you like 
the new “compatible” disc. 

Dear AUI, 

My son, Jon, found your 
magazine in Sacramento, 
California. We are delighted 
with it. For $10.00 we got the 
magazine, your first CD cover 
disk and Superdisk No. 33. 

Good value for money. Thank 
you. 

We bought a CD32 last 
Christmas from Canada and 
don’t have much to use on it. 
The CD32 is now making a 
belated appearance on the US 
market. Commodore is using 
the new “stealth” or “secret 
introduction” marketing 
strategy. Nobody knows the 
CD32 exists, except the Amiga 
press, and Amigaphiles. 

We have seen some 
mention of it in non-Amiga 
games magazines where 
articles discuss future 
hardware. However, the 
thought of a magazine such as 
yours - dedicated solely to 
Amiga CD - is beyond the 
realms of possibility here. 

Two questions: 

1) Is it possible for us to 
buy Superdisk No. 34? No. 33 
came with the magazine, but 
we want No. 34. 

2) Would you advise us to 
continue buying your magazine 
here, or would it be better to 
get a subscription with you? 

One more question: Do you 
have a list of previous disks 
that might still be available? In 
your magazine (March/April 
1994 page 14) you mention we 
can get the cover disk for 
£1.00.1 doubt that would 
include overseas readers. I’m 
reluctant to buy an 
International Money Order for 
£1.00 only. If I saw some disks I 
wanted on your list, I could 
place a larger order. 

I’m editor of a magazine, so 
I know you don’t have a lot of 
time to answer letters. You 
-► 


JULY 1994 • AUI 


129 








ply 


have to get the magazine out! 
Those deadlines are relentless. 
But we would love to hear from 
you about Superdisk No. 34. 

Thank you. Keep up the 
good work. 

Roy Gee 
Applegate 
California 

Dear Roy, 

It’s a great honour to have an 
editor of another magazine write 
to us and yes, it was just an 
international order of £1 we were 
asking for. The sum is a nominal 
one simply with the idea of 
stopping non-serious requests but 
we are happy to send one to you - 
in fact one has already been 
mailed this time without charge. 

I love your description of 
Commodore’s marketing 
technique, “stealth” like the 
fighter.. 

Yes, we have sometimes 
wondered whether they 
deliberately have gone out of their 
way to do it wrong but no, human 
beings, especially those in the 
computer world have an almost 
unlimited rapacity for blowing 
even the most stone cold certain 
of opportunities. What is the old 
saying “To err is human but to 
really cock it up you need a 
computer. ”? 

Actually I don’t think it’s the 
right way round. Computers go 
wrong only if the humans kick 
them into it... And even without 
computers humans have always 
been capable of world shaking 
and frequently fatal cock ups. 

We certainly can, if any one 
wants them, supply disks from the 
past and we have plans to make 
that easy for readers. Once again 
watch this space. 

I can’t give much advice on 
the future supplies of AUl/ACDI in 
North America. That possibly 
depends on the continuing loyalty 
and buying power of Amiga users 
there - and even the continuance 
of Commodore on this vale of 
woe.. But a subscription would 
make sure you get a copy and is 
the only certain way of getting a 
regular supply of the magazine. 
(Or should it be “fix”? From some 
of the letters I get it seems that 


some readers need it that badly 
each month - and I AM talking 
about AUI!) 

Dear AUI, 

I would first like you to pass on 
my thanks (once again) to Andy 
Eskelson for all his help with a 
recent problem I had with my 
Cub Scan monitor. Nothing he 
sent me was able to remove the 
“Screen Offset” problem as it 
appears to be a design fault 
with the monitor, but I can’t 
thank him enough for his help. 
He is a credit to the team. 

I am writing to comment on 
this month’s issue. I like the 
way that you have taken 
Multimedia very much to heart. 

I feel that this area is a major 
breakthrough for computers. 

My only moan is the fact that 
all the major magazines appear 
to be on “The Magic 
Roundabout” in the way that 
they are repeating the same 
type of review - MediaPoint - 
Helm - Cando - Scala - 
MediaPoint - Helm - Cando - 
Scala, and around they go 
again. The problem is that 
nothing new appears to come 
out in the reviews. I would very 
much like to see AUI take 
multimedia much further. By 
this I mean why doesn’t 
someone tell readers how to 
link a CD Rom to their machine 
using the correct cable and 
software, as well as showing 
them how to transfer files etc. 
Also, if people are using this 
type of software to produce 
“CD size” titles, why have no 
contact points been printed. I 
would like to see names and 
numbers listed, so that if I 
wanted to, I could contact 
someone to produce a CD for 
me. Just a small query, but why 
has no review been done on 
Interplay. I know that it is very 
expensive, but I have been told 
that it is a great package. 

I am looking forward to the 
release of a CD player for the 
A4000, but as yet I have 
purchased a CDI, which I have 
to say is great and I can’t fault 
it in any way. FMV films are 
superb, and while the quality is 


not quite as good as my 
laserdisk player I have no 
doubt that as soon as a 1 gb re¬ 
writeable disk is produced for 
this use, then video is a dead 
duck. The sooner the better. 

One section that I would like 
to see in AUI is a contact 
corner. I write software for CLR 
and local Schools, some of 
which you may have had a 
laugh at - 

The Prehistoric Funpact 
Peg A Picture 
My Little Artist 
Understanding Amos 2 
and there are many times 
that I would have liked some 
help with such projects, but 
have been unable to find an 
artist, etc. There are so many 
great pictures and modules 
sent to the magazines, but 
there is no way to contact any 
of the people who have 
produced them. 

One final point - Is there any 
chance of producing a 
“Multimedia Cover Disk” which 
would be filled with Pictures - 
Sound Samples - Clip Art - 
Anims - and PD software such 
as Dsound that could be used 
by the MM creator. 

Thanks again for a great 
mag and keep up the good 
work. 

Stephen Bennett 
Dudley 
West Midlands 


Dear Stephen, 

A lot of points here: 

First, I don’t know how you 
came to miss it but we did review 
Interplay - and used it to help 
create the first two CDs. Though 
we’ve gone to Can Do for this 


issue’s CD. And thanks to 
Innovatronics for their help too. 

I don’t quite get your point 
about all those authoring 
systems. We have reviewed them 
all and given them plenty of 
attention. In this issue’s CD, for 
example, we are going back and 
covering Mediapoint again as 
there is an important update. 

As for creating a multimedia 
disc, what we hope to do is give 
enough information to let anyone 
have a go for themselves but if 
you really want someone to help 
you, contact us and we can put 
you in touch with the right people 
- though I must warn you that 
multimedia at a professional level 
can be an expensive affair. 

As for a CD drive for the 4000, 
well, I can’t tell you when but 
there is some encouragement 
from the CD drive for the 1200 
which we are reviewing in this 
AUI. If they can do it for the 1200 
why not the 4000? 

CD-I? What are you doing 
with that 16 bit stuff? You could 
play the movies on the CD 32 
with an FMV cartridge and have 
the benefit of all the luscious 
Amiga technology - 32 bit at that. 

We’re sorry if the contacts you 
want have not been included we 
generally manage to get them 
and put them in. 

And as for graphic disks - or 
discs - and other PD-style stuff, 
well, there are some very good 
discs of that kind that have come 
from Almathera (Tel: 081 687 
0040) but if there is anything we 
can find that will be suitable for 
the material you want we will do 
what we can to get it on a disc - 
and put it on the cover. 

And you’re an Andy Eskelson 
fan? So are we all! 


Send your letters to: 
Write to Reply 

AUI 

Amiga User International 
48 George Street, 
London W1H5RT 


If you wish to send an Email letter to 
Write to Reply or Amiga Answers, AUI 
can be contacted on CIX as 

Amigauser@compulink.co.uk 


130 


AUI • JULY 1994 
















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Rarely will you find a device so highly acclaimed 
os the Vidi series. A range of products designed 
to suit both your budget ond requirement. 

To Offer you complete peace of mind, each ond 
every model is upgradeable to the next. So if 
you move towards a more professional 
application your digitiser can progress with you. 


„ r are you faced with an out of date 
product that doesn't fulfill your needs. Its all 
very well me blowing my trumpet, but what do 
the journalists think of the Vidi Range ? 


After purchase we 
welcome your 
comments, its our 
policy to listen. 

In fact the 
Vidi range was 
designed by 
user feedback. 



Managing Director 


O 



Q 


w 


hat the press said.. 


comes close." ® Clser 

RT t - £ !? 9 1 think f hat Vidi 12 
24 ^/h' 6 9 kea P est real-time 2 
S ^! t ‘ ser 'n the world 
tsthe only one for Amiga 
that doesn’t need a big box 

or3000 e " SUch astheA, 500 


Alan Pbzn'AMIGA USER INL"What can I sav ? 
Between £200 ond £300 for an excellent 24-1 rent 
Je frame grabber that you 

£T here; 'f s Sooronteed to brealfthe ice 
parties when you slip it out and extol its virtues." 





AUI 

AWARDED 

98% 

FEBRUARY 

1994 


Vidi Amiga 12 is our entry level digitiser. Perfect for someone 
who's getting involved in video capture for the first time. This 
model captures mono pictures in real-time, colour in less than 
a second. - 

Software includes an Animation Workstation and powerful 
Image Processing grabs pictures in 4096 colours and 16 **■- ■ ** 

greyscales. Comprehensive file support includes BMP, Tiff, IFF, 

ANIM etc. Fully compatible with all Amiga's. 

£99.95 

Vidi Amiga 12RT, is the perfect Multimedia video tool for 
A1200 users. Offering real-time colour image capture in all 
Amiga modes including 24-bit. 

Fully compatible with all Amiga's, 2 meg or above. Images 
can be grabbed in 16.7 million colours or 256 greyscales from 
any video source (TV, Video, Satellite etc.) Connect Vidi to 
your camcorder and you have one of the most powerful 
scanning devices available. £ 199 

Vidi Amiga 24RT is our most powerful real-time digitiser. Producing SHR (Super High 
Resolution) true colour images at beyond broadcast quality. Designed for the normal 
user, but offering truly professional results. For the person who wishes to push his 
Amiga to it's MAX I 

It will capture your imagination, bringing photorealistic images to your screen. 

Suitable for any image related multimedia, picture scanning application. Although this 
model is compatible with all Amiga's it is best used on AGA machines or Amiga's 
fitted with true colour display cards. Most of this advert has been produced using Vidi £ 299 
Amiga 24RT so throw away your scanner! 


SEPTEMBER 

1993 


AMIGA 

MANIAC 

AWARDED 

98% 


MAY 

1993 




AUI 

AWARDED 

98% 

JANUARY 

1993 


Rombo, winners 
of the coveted 
SMART Awards 1 & 2 
for innovation 




Further information and 
details on how to order 

fe ON: 0m 44M01 


Rombo, Kirkton Campus, Livingston, SCOTLAND, EH 54 7AZ. 


Full working program disk and manual available for £29 
also includes image disk.
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